Cindy Lee – ‘Diamond Jubilee’ album review: a waver odyssey, a vital statement
THE SKINNY: Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee has a lovely little ring to it; thankfully, so does the record, which is just as well because it may well be one we’re talking about for a long time to come. It is technically the seventh album by the band that functions as the experimental performance and songwriting vehicle of musician Patrick Flegel, the former singer of Women. With it, the Canadian enigma rises to a new indie height.
It might be dainty, distant and mysterious: small and delicate words by anyone’s measure, but it is also impossible to think of Diamond Jubilee without evoking the stark larger picture prompted by its constituent parts. From the get-go, the record has refused to play ball, not appearing on any conventional streaming platform and simply splicing into the world like a time slip from AM Radio. Everything else about it follows suit, each facet making the music more than the sum of its parts.
Its haunted sound might just be a novel lo-fi way to pay homage to the doo-wop days of the past, bringing something new to ‘60s pop, but it also conjures a listlessness, a wistful sense that all revolutions died along with counterculture and now alternative futures are impossible to imagine. So, Flegel dredges up the best of the past with a dreaminess – coating ‘Lisa Says’-like anthems with a heavy dose of reverberation and wavering instrumentation – that oddly sets you thinking about the future.
That sound is the cornerstone of a philosophical odyssey, all stirred up by the sparsest of compositions and the most considered artistry. Every decision feels like part of a studious and enigmatic project. The 122-minute runtime might have just been the product of a flippant approach to editing, but when you’re in the grips of the floating cavalcade, it’s a move that proves impossible not to embellish with thoughts of the ever-flowing content stream in the digital age.
Even the imperfections, of which there are naturally a few in the two-hour experiment, seem to express a sense of moving senescence, as though the album is an evolving body of work rather than a fixed and polished analogue product. The mystic Cindy Lee character that Patrick Flegel puts forth even plays a part in eliciting thoughts of unbound creativity in the post-truth age. And all of this is done with stirring skill and sweet catchiness.
That’s the high point of the record: all the intellectualising it prompts is the product first of being moved enough to give a shit about it. The casual bedroomy introspection ensures you can’t help but be moved by it on that front. It is a strange and unknowable indie epic.
For fans of: Missing your bus stop, wistfully gazing out of the window, wondering what Albert Camus would’ve made of Instagram. And being over all that partying nonsense.
A concluding comment from Daniel Ek’s worried mind: “Fuck it, it’s too long anyway.”
Release Date: March 29th | Producer: Patrick Flegel and Steven Lind | Label: Realistik Studios
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