Cindy Lee
Diamond Jubilee
Boomkat Product Review:
Bursting at the seams with ideas and mushy emotionality, Cindy Lee's hypnagogic 2-hour magnum opus has quite rightly been touted as one of the best albums of the year - if not the decade. Ex-Women frontperson Patrick Flegel's vision of rock 'n roll is anachronistically nostalgic, an oily tincture of vintage psych, dilated funk and ghosted girl group pop that stews in its heartbreaking sincerity. Urgent listening for fans of Jessica Pratt, Brian Wilson, The Walker Brothers, U.S. Girls or Karen Carpenter.
It makes sense that Flegel launched their seventh Cindy Lee full-length on their web 1.0-style Geocities homepage earlier this year. The long-running web hosting service holds a special place in the hearts for people of a certain age - it's not so much what it was, exactly, but what it represented at a time when the implications of a digital future weren't yet clear. 'Diamond Jubilee' arrives at a time when nostalgia has been not just hyper-commodified, but weaponised; the concept of looking back to a time when life was easier, safer and simpler is intertwined with the acceleration of technological progress. Before we were made aware of the deluge of information that surrounded us, culture was very different - messages were easier to parse, and criticism, rightly or wrongly, was far more universally accepted. Flegel assaults us with content here - the album weighs in at 32 tracks - and although they repeatedly draw from the past, their yesteryear isn't fixed, or particularly physical. Their nostalgia is purposefully fantastical, a reverb-drenched collage of ideas that spans the long history of rock 'n roll and radio pop, and buried in amongst the tangled artifice is a strain of emotional earnestness that's refreshingly rare.
None of this will be a huge surprise to anyone who's familiar with Flegel's prior Cindy Lee canon or their work with Women - one of the most quietly influential Canadian art rock bands of the '00s. But 'Diamond Jubilee', despite its length, focuses their gaze, subverting and twisting rock's litany of stereotypes until its impressionistic spatter of half-remembered aesthetics coagulates into an anxiously contemporary statement. There's the muddy echo of West African pop in the guitar phrasing that underpins the title track, before disco-era strings and boxy West Coast psych drums interrupt the mood abruptly; and it's Flegel's androgynous Brian Wilson-style cries that wring the passion out of the track. From bar to bar, the track morphs almost seamlessly, and Flegel anchors the chaos with their words. "What could I find, in a fantasy," they purr. "A burning memory, of something true." And it's not just genre that they cram into the meat grinder: on 'Baby Blue', the already lo-fi textures takes a hit when Flegel pushes the psych rock thuds into the red, transforming the kick drum into an empty pop that disappears into the fudgy, distorted guitars, and on the exotica-tinged 'Til Polarity's End', Flegel drowns the entire track in saturation so it sounds as if it's vibrating through a flooded abandoned factory.
It's an album that's craftily casual, as if you're supposed to assume it's been hastily cobbled together unless you decide to scratch at the wallpaper. There's a near-ambient quality to many of the tracks, that harnesses the same mixture of uneasy homesickness and reverie as the best vaporwave, but Flegel is consistently there to remind us that whatever it is we might be feeling, we're not isolated. "I'm only dreaming," they sing over near invisible bass twangs and kosmische arpeggios on 'Always Dreaming'. "Things aren't as awful as they're seeming." Even on the more formal pop moments - like 'Kingdom Come' or the heartbreaking 'If You Hear Me Crying' - Flegel's girl group swing is disrupted by their diaphanous reverb, peculiar tunings and odd rhythms. A chirpy, echoing beat patters over the former, while Flegel adds wonky strums and coarse, unexpected noises, singing "I could have sworn I heard you call my name, over the melodies of yesterday," as if he's pulling flesh from bone, and revealing the album's circulatory system.
It's an album that sticks in the throat, a set of broadly hypnogogic pop vignettes that embrace the expected cultural nihilism, but also grasping the passion that defined another era. "All I've got's this song," he cries on 'Don't Tell Me I'm Wrong'. "And your memory."
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Triple LP on black vinyl comes with 24” x 36” poster.
Estimated Release Date: 21 February 2025
Please note that shipping dates for pre-orders are estimated and are subject to change
Boomkat Product Review:
Bursting at the seams with ideas and mushy emotionality, Cindy Lee's hypnagogic 2-hour magnum opus has quite rightly been touted as one of the best albums of the year - if not the decade. Ex-Women frontperson Patrick Flegel's vision of rock 'n roll is anachronistically nostalgic, an oily tincture of vintage psych, dilated funk and ghosted girl group pop that stews in its heartbreaking sincerity. Urgent listening for fans of Jessica Pratt, Brian Wilson, The Walker Brothers, U.S. Girls or Karen Carpenter.
It makes sense that Flegel launched their seventh Cindy Lee full-length on their web 1.0-style Geocities homepage earlier this year. The long-running web hosting service holds a special place in the hearts for people of a certain age - it's not so much what it was, exactly, but what it represented at a time when the implications of a digital future weren't yet clear. 'Diamond Jubilee' arrives at a time when nostalgia has been not just hyper-commodified, but weaponised; the concept of looking back to a time when life was easier, safer and simpler is intertwined with the acceleration of technological progress. Before we were made aware of the deluge of information that surrounded us, culture was very different - messages were easier to parse, and criticism, rightly or wrongly, was far more universally accepted. Flegel assaults us with content here - the album weighs in at 32 tracks - and although they repeatedly draw from the past, their yesteryear isn't fixed, or particularly physical. Their nostalgia is purposefully fantastical, a reverb-drenched collage of ideas that spans the long history of rock 'n roll and radio pop, and buried in amongst the tangled artifice is a strain of emotional earnestness that's refreshingly rare.
None of this will be a huge surprise to anyone who's familiar with Flegel's prior Cindy Lee canon or their work with Women - one of the most quietly influential Canadian art rock bands of the '00s. But 'Diamond Jubilee', despite its length, focuses their gaze, subverting and twisting rock's litany of stereotypes until its impressionistic spatter of half-remembered aesthetics coagulates into an anxiously contemporary statement. There's the muddy echo of West African pop in the guitar phrasing that underpins the title track, before disco-era strings and boxy West Coast psych drums interrupt the mood abruptly; and it's Flegel's androgynous Brian Wilson-style cries that wring the passion out of the track. From bar to bar, the track morphs almost seamlessly, and Flegel anchors the chaos with their words. "What could I find, in a fantasy," they purr. "A burning memory, of something true." And it's not just genre that they cram into the meat grinder: on 'Baby Blue', the already lo-fi textures takes a hit when Flegel pushes the psych rock thuds into the red, transforming the kick drum into an empty pop that disappears into the fudgy, distorted guitars, and on the exotica-tinged 'Til Polarity's End', Flegel drowns the entire track in saturation so it sounds as if it's vibrating through a flooded abandoned factory.
It's an album that's craftily casual, as if you're supposed to assume it's been hastily cobbled together unless you decide to scratch at the wallpaper. There's a near-ambient quality to many of the tracks, that harnesses the same mixture of uneasy homesickness and reverie as the best vaporwave, but Flegel is consistently there to remind us that whatever it is we might be feeling, we're not isolated. "I'm only dreaming," they sing over near invisible bass twangs and kosmische arpeggios on 'Always Dreaming'. "Things aren't as awful as they're seeming." Even on the more formal pop moments - like 'Kingdom Come' or the heartbreaking 'If You Hear Me Crying' - Flegel's girl group swing is disrupted by their diaphanous reverb, peculiar tunings and odd rhythms. A chirpy, echoing beat patters over the former, while Flegel adds wonky strums and coarse, unexpected noises, singing "I could have sworn I heard you call my name, over the melodies of yesterday," as if he's pulling flesh from bone, and revealing the album's circulatory system.
It's an album that sticks in the throat, a set of broadly hypnogogic pop vignettes that embrace the expected cultural nihilism, but also grasping the passion that defined another era. "All I've got's this song," he cries on 'Don't Tell Me I'm Wrong'. "And your memory."
Estimated Release Date: 21 February 2025
Please note that shipping dates for pre-orders are estimated and are subject to change
Boomkat Product Review:
Bursting at the seams with ideas and mushy emotionality, Cindy Lee's hypnagogic 2-hour magnum opus has quite rightly been touted as one of the best albums of the year - if not the decade. Ex-Women frontperson Patrick Flegel's vision of rock 'n roll is anachronistically nostalgic, an oily tincture of vintage psych, dilated funk and ghosted girl group pop that stews in its heartbreaking sincerity. Urgent listening for fans of Jessica Pratt, Brian Wilson, The Walker Brothers, U.S. Girls or Karen Carpenter.
It makes sense that Flegel launched their seventh Cindy Lee full-length on their web 1.0-style Geocities homepage earlier this year. The long-running web hosting service holds a special place in the hearts for people of a certain age - it's not so much what it was, exactly, but what it represented at a time when the implications of a digital future weren't yet clear. 'Diamond Jubilee' arrives at a time when nostalgia has been not just hyper-commodified, but weaponised; the concept of looking back to a time when life was easier, safer and simpler is intertwined with the acceleration of technological progress. Before we were made aware of the deluge of information that surrounded us, culture was very different - messages were easier to parse, and criticism, rightly or wrongly, was far more universally accepted. Flegel assaults us with content here - the album weighs in at 32 tracks - and although they repeatedly draw from the past, their yesteryear isn't fixed, or particularly physical. Their nostalgia is purposefully fantastical, a reverb-drenched collage of ideas that spans the long history of rock 'n roll and radio pop, and buried in amongst the tangled artifice is a strain of emotional earnestness that's refreshingly rare.
None of this will be a huge surprise to anyone who's familiar with Flegel's prior Cindy Lee canon or their work with Women - one of the most quietly influential Canadian art rock bands of the '00s. But 'Diamond Jubilee', despite its length, focuses their gaze, subverting and twisting rock's litany of stereotypes until its impressionistic spatter of half-remembered aesthetics coagulates into an anxiously contemporary statement. There's the muddy echo of West African pop in the guitar phrasing that underpins the title track, before disco-era strings and boxy West Coast psych drums interrupt the mood abruptly; and it's Flegel's androgynous Brian Wilson-style cries that wring the passion out of the track. From bar to bar, the track morphs almost seamlessly, and Flegel anchors the chaos with their words. "What could I find, in a fantasy," they purr. "A burning memory, of something true." And it's not just genre that they cram into the meat grinder: on 'Baby Blue', the already lo-fi textures takes a hit when Flegel pushes the psych rock thuds into the red, transforming the kick drum into an empty pop that disappears into the fudgy, distorted guitars, and on the exotica-tinged 'Til Polarity's End', Flegel drowns the entire track in saturation so it sounds as if it's vibrating through a flooded abandoned factory.
It's an album that's craftily casual, as if you're supposed to assume it's been hastily cobbled together unless you decide to scratch at the wallpaper. There's a near-ambient quality to many of the tracks, that harnesses the same mixture of uneasy homesickness and reverie as the best vaporwave, but Flegel is consistently there to remind us that whatever it is we might be feeling, we're not isolated. "I'm only dreaming," they sing over near invisible bass twangs and kosmische arpeggios on 'Always Dreaming'. "Things aren't as awful as they're seeming." Even on the more formal pop moments - like 'Kingdom Come' or the heartbreaking 'If You Hear Me Crying' - Flegel's girl group swing is disrupted by their diaphanous reverb, peculiar tunings and odd rhythms. A chirpy, echoing beat patters over the former, while Flegel adds wonky strums and coarse, unexpected noises, singing "I could have sworn I heard you call my name, over the melodies of yesterday," as if he's pulling flesh from bone, and revealing the album's circulatory system.
It's an album that sticks in the throat, a set of broadly hypnogogic pop vignettes that embrace the expected cultural nihilism, but also grasping the passion that defined another era. "All I've got's this song," he cries on 'Don't Tell Me I'm Wrong'. "And your memory."
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