CINDY LEE
Diamond Jubilee REALISTIK 9/10
An out-of-the-blue magnum opus from the Canadian indie drag artist.
By Daniel Dylan Wray
Upwardly mobile:
Patrick Flegelaka CindyLee
RETAINING mystery in the digital age is a difficult task.
And even more difficult in this time of over-saturation is releasing a record through entirely unconventional means and having it make a dent, let alone a meaningful impact. On Diamond Jubilee – the seventh album from Patrick Flegel’s alter-ego drag artist persona – Cindy Lee manages to achieve both.
This album is not available to buy on any physical format yet. Nor is it on Spotify, Bandcamp or Apple. It is available only to download (for free, with donations encouraged) via the web 1.0 hosting site Geocities or to stream, ad-free, via YouTube. There is no accompanying press or liner notes, no artist bio, no interviews; just a sprawling two-part, two-hour record that has dropped in from nowhere like a parachute from the sky containing precious cargo. Although rather than disappearing into the ether as it lands, ignored by the algorithms, playlists and radio stations who have no access to the tracks to promote it, the album has instead landed to fervent hype.
Remarkably, such buzz appears entirely justified. Diamond Jubilee feels like the work of an artist operating at the peak of their powers who is able to harness and crystallise all that potency and charge into a record that, on the surface, should be far too large, messy and stretched out to contain such a cohesive body of work.
Flegel has always shown chops as a songwriter; in their previous band Women they potently blended art-rock with flourishes of both pop and noise, while their previous records as Cindy Lee have shown promise by equally straddling the lines between experimentation and accessibility. However, Diamond Jubilee sounds like a record on which everything has come together and moved into another realm.
SLEEVE NOTES
Part One
1 Diamond Jubilee
2 Glitz
3 Baby Blue
4 Dreams Of You
5 All I Want Is You
6 Dallas
7 Olive Drab
8 Always Dreaming
9 Wild One
10 Flesh And Blood
11 Le Machiniste Fantome
12 Kingdom Come
13 Demon Bitch
14 I Have My Doubts
15 Til Polarity’s End
16 Realistik Heaven
Part Two
1 Stone Faces
2 Gayblevision
3 Dracula
4 Lockstepp
5 Government Cheque
6 Deepest Blue
7 To Heal This Wounded Heart
8 Golden Microphone
9 If You Hear Me Crying
10 Darling Of The Diskoteque
11 Don’t Tell Me I’m Wrong
12 What’s It Going To Take
13 Wild Rose
14 Durham City Limit
15 Crime Of Passion
16 24/7 Heaven
Recorded at: Realistik Studios
Produced by: Patrick Flegel, Steven Lind
Personnel: Patrick Flegel (multiple instruments, vocals), Steven Lind (occasional bass, drums, synthesiser)
It blurs genres with glee, gliding between ’50s doo wop, ’60s girl groups, psychedelic pop and lo-fi indie, all delivered with a woozy, dreamy, occasionally crepuscular tone. “Always Dreaming” sounds like new-age dream- pop filtered through a busted four-track; “Demon Bitch” comes across as exactly the kind of thing you’d be delighted to hear on an album of outtakes from the self-titled Velvet Underground album, while “Glitz” recalls early Tame Impala if they really amped up the glam but wound down the production.