Blending Americana storytelling with pop clarity, Sydney Ross Mitchell’s ‘Cynthia’ EP explores identity, longing, and the quiet grief of outgrowing home.

Stream: ‘Cynthia’ – Sydney Ross Mitchell

There’s a certain kind of nostalgia that doesn’t soften with time – it sharpens.

Cynthia lives in that space: Sun-faded and restless, full of road-trip reveries and late-night clarity, the one that hits when you’re barefoot on unfamiliar ground and suddenly aware of how far you’ve traveled from who you used to be. Sydney Ross Mitchell’s latest EP holds space for homesickness in all its disguises – not just for places, but for people, expectations, and versions of the self that were never allowed to fully exist. It understands that some people will always insist on seeing you as they need you to be, no matter how much you change. In that tension – between roots and reinvention – Cynthia finds its quiet power.

Cynthia took me hard by the shoulders in
The bathroom between
dances with the gentlemen
She took the money from my hands,
said, “I see Jesus in your eyes
You’ll never belong here,
no matter how hard you try”

And they say,
“You’ll understand it someday
Sweetheart, don’t throw
your whole life away
You have such a beautiful face”

– “Cynthia,” Sydney Ross Mitchell

Released on February 6, 2026, Cynthia marks a defining moment for Sydney Ross Mitchell. Produced by Mason Stoops, Jonathan Wilson, Michael Harris, and Sammy Witte, the EP moves fluidly between expansive arrangements and stripped-back emotional confessionals, mirroring the inner push and pull at the heart of Mitchell’s writing. After relocating to Los Angeles, Mitchell spent years waiting tables and writing songs between shifts, slowly carving out a space for herself in the city’s creative margins. Released via Disruptor Records, Cynthia was preceded by the singles “Cynthia” and “Queen of Homecoming,” both offering early glimpses of the emotional terrain the EP would go on to map in full.

Sonically, Cynthia exists somewhere between Americana storytelling and pop transcendence, with occasional country inflections that feel more inherited than intentional.

Mitchell’s voice remains plainspoken but searching, grounded in emotional honesty rather than ornamentation. The EP feels like a natural evolution of the intimacy she explored on Pure Bliss Forever, leaning further into nostalgia without romanticizing it. These songs feel lived-in – concerned less with spectacle than with meaning, with tracing how belief, desire, and memory intersect in the quiet moments we don’t always know how to name.

Lyrically, Cynthia circles themes of desire, guilt, self-indulgence, faith, grief, and the complicated gravity of family. Mitchell writes with particular tenderness about roots – the ones that nourish you and the ones that tighten when you try to leave. Few lines capture this conflict as cleanly as those in “Queen of Homecoming”: “I’m terribly sorry for the one homesick bone in my body / For the small part of me that somehow believes that somewhere in Texas is something I need.” It’s an apology and a confession at once, acknowledging the lingering pull of home even when you know it can’t give you what you’re looking for anymore.

The EP’s highlights unfold naturally rather than demanding attention. “Kisses on Ice” recalls the breezier edges of Mitchell’s earlier work, echoing tracks like “World’s Greatest Lover” and “Sting” with its sense of romantic freedom and ease. The title track, “Cynthia,” stands at the emotional center of the record: A surreal, almost cinematic encounter in a strip club bathroom with an older woman who claims divine instruction, unknowingly reopening Mitchell’s long-standing struggle with religion and self-worth. The song unfolds with remarkable restraint, allowing desire, guilt, grace, and memory to coexist without resolution.

“Queen of Homecoming” emerges as the EP’s emotional anchor – a reckoning with hometown mythology and the ache of wanting recognition from a place you’ve already outgrown. As a whole, Cynthia flows effortlessly, its pacing inviting repeated listens. One moment you’re driving through Los Angeles at dusk; the next, you’re dancing in a club at 3 a.m., or racing across the Mojave Desert with the windows down. There’s a dreamy innocence to the production that never wears thin, and at times, it even recalls the emotional openness of George Michael’s quieter moments.

What Cynthia ultimately reveals about Sydney Ross Mitchell is a growing confidence – not just in her sound, but in her willingness to speak plainly about subjects that still make people uncomfortable.

The EP doesn’t soften its truths for accessibility, and that’s precisely what gives it weight. In choosing honesty over palatability, Mitchell affirms that vulnerability can be both risky and rewarding.

Cynthia is for listeners drawn to strong storytelling and emotional clarity – for those with complicated relationships to their families, their hometowns, or the futures they were once expected to want. It resonates deeply in a cultural moment where redefining success, womanhood, and belonging feels both urgent and fraught. Mitchell doesn’t offer answers so much as companionship, reminding us that uncertainty can still be a place to stand.

In Cynthia, Sydney Ross Mitchell doesn’t ask to be understood – she simply tells the truth, and trusts the right listeners to hear it.

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 © Cole Silberman

Cynthia

an EP by Sydney Ross Mitchell