Hi, everyone. Anthony Cuptano, here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Cindy Lee album, Diamond Jubilee.

Here we have the latest LP from a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer Patrick Flegal, A. K. A. Cindy Lee, an artist who's been active for well over a decade at this point, but is now just getting an interesting little bump off of this latest here.

Now, I've long been a fan of Patrick's work back when they were one-fourth of the amazing Canadian lofi, neo-psychedelic outfit, Women, which began as one of those diamond in the rough indie bands that were beloved by logs and had a handful of great songs to their name. Then they eventually hit us with the 2010 album Public Strain, which, in my opinion, is one of the greatest Canadian contributions to underground rock in the 2010s. The record was pretty well received at the time, and it's only gotten more love as the years have drawn on, thankfully. Sadly, an infamous on-stage fight that happened the same year this record was released would lead to women canceling the rest of their tour. And with the question of whether or not the band had any plans to actually get back together, left unanswered, guitarist Chris Reimer passed away tragically in his sleep just a few years later. All of this clearly created a fissure within women that was too great to overcome, and respective members of the band split off into their own creative directions.

Out of the gate, the more notable Women offshoot was handily Patrick's brother Matt and drummer Mike Wallace teaming up to create the band Viet Cong, who would eventually change their name to Preoccupations in 2016. The band has released some decent records over the years, which mostly distilled down the post-punk elements that were always prevalent at the core of women's music. Meanwhile, Pat here humored a few different music projects since the early 2010s, but Cindy Lee is the most notable of them and also comes with a bit of lore as well, as Cindy Lee is not just a band name, but also a drag queen alter ego that Patrick creates musical under. And listening to Cindy Lee's music outside of the Women bubble, it's clear to see it was Patrick who was really at the heart of a lot of the more eerie, lofi and vintage elements of women's music, because every Cindy Lee record up until this point has just pure indulgence in that. To the point where, personally, I haven't gotten a lot out of much of it.

Even career highlights like the fifth full-length LP, What's Tonight to Eternity?, which landed on quite a few year-end lists in 2020, and I believe was shortlisted for a Mercury Prize, too. But the shrill and piercing production throughout this project only went so far for me, even if I can't deny that the mythos surrounding Cindy Lee is creative. For sure, no other music project at the time was reviving the sounds of brill building, old-school vocal pop, with the noisy and textured flair that Cindy Lee was. It's because of all of this, Patrick, Cindy Lee albums just fell into the background for me over the years.

However, consistency and prolifically recording seems to have paid off because this new LP here is so huge. I can't even ignore it. It seems to be turning heads with a lot of listeners, even with the release of this record being a little unorthodox by today's standards. Because as of the shooting of this video, there is no physical for it, from what I understand. It's not even on streaming. You can hear this record through a single YouTube upload, or you can go on to a geo cities website where you can pretty much download the record for yourself and then pay a donation to the artist, which honestly is maybe the best way to drop a project like this.

I mean, you certainly can't accuse Patrick of stream-maxing with the two disks and 32 tracks of material on this thing. I'll admit, despite being cold and indifferent toward Patrick's previous material in this project, I'm actually enjoying this new album here a whole lot. I'm admiring the ambition of pulling this much material together. But on top of that, the more punishing noise and feedback that has slathered Cindy Lee's previous LPs is at an all-time low.

Now, mind you, it's not gone. This record here is still very much a work of lofi wizardry. But for me, part of the beauty and challenge of lofi music is having the talent to write songs that will shine through all of the muck and mayhem. Plus all the noises and fuzz and sonic bleed between the instruments. It can be fun. You could really go through this record all day eating up all of the strange, funny, crazy variations throughout each track, all the happy mistakes and unique blemishes. Then there's the hypnagogic pop element to all of this. "I'm sorry to hear that, Annie. The doctor diagnosed my pop with hypnagogic too. Is that true? And they said he's got two months to live. No, No, no, no, Papa."

What I mean is that Cindy Lee is more consciously than ever dabbling in this deeply nostalgic form of retro surrealism straight out of youth music from the '50s and '60s, which for sure has always been the case for Cindy Lee, as Patrick has often cited Karen Carpenter as a massive influence. But I feel like on this LP, especially with the amount of material on it, we are digging deeper into this world than we ever have before through Patrick's stuff. There are more notes of Brian Wilson's production and influence throughout the songs on this record. There's more sunshine pop, more blue-eyed soul, more classic rock and roll and RnB. Also touches of rockabilly.

Even a few tracks that feel like they're doing a new wave thing, and some of the most memorable groups on the entire record crop up as a result, like on "GAYBLEVISION." But regardless of what sound or style Patrick is going for on any given song. It's all pretty much pulled together with this loose, effortless execution that has the amateurish mystique of the Velvet underground. If I could throw out a non-musical parallel in this review, there's something odd, beautiful, innocent, familiar, harsh, and a little unnerving about this record as well, all at the same time like a good John Waters film.

But most importantly, this album feels like a warped memory of a warped memory, the thing that only exists in a dream. That's pretty much the appeal of this record in a nutshell. I think Patrick, for the most part, is scratching all the right itches. This thing is very cohesive, especially for such a long album. Much of the material on this record, emotionally and sonically, is coming from a very similar place. But simultaneously, it's varied enough to where if you handed this to me out of the blue on a burned CD and said, 'Hey, here's a bunch of weirdo experimental demos from some lost '60s label from back in the day,' I'd have to believe you. The production on this thing has just the right amount of reverb on it to make these tracks consistently dreamy. The overall sensation being something akin to ambient music as you can really put this record on in the background as a mood or a tone setter. But by that same token, there are enough interesting little musical and production details that you can really dive into these tracks and enjoy them up front as well. Also, the guitar playing, the songwriting, the vocal melodies throughout the record are all very sweet and very quaint.

I'm not really going to get into any specific songs in this review because honestly, if I did, we'd be here all day. There's just so much to go over on this album that there's not really anything for you guys to do other than just go out there and discover it for yourselves. Basically, that is my general pro-argument for this album.

What are the cons? Well, I will say that two hours of material on this thing is a pretty massive ask for a record. This thing does draw on after a while, and as good as a lot of the songs are, I do think the production and instrumentation could be a bit more varied if this is the run time that we're working with. However, nobody says you have to sit down and enjoy both disks of this thing all at once. And with the flow of this record being as casual as it is, I guess you can take whatever you like on this record as it goes, because I guess that's my other major issue with the LP. The flow is just okay. I feel like you could arrange these songs together in any number of ways and get mostly the same effect.

On top of it, while I did go this record expecting some messy playing, some blemishes, as that pretty much comes with the territory of lofi music, generally. Some of them are so egregious. It hurts the appeal of these tracks. With playing this loose, you are engaging in a balancing act of sorts. I think Patrick mostly nails that balance for the 32 tracks here. But every once in a while, you are getting hit with blatantly sour guitar notes, drum hits that are off. Sometimes the drums and guitars are very blatantly out of sync for a few bars. The mixing and production does have its shortcomings here and there, even by lofi standards. Sometimes you will get hit with a guitar tone that is just too shrill, or even the drums can be super loud to the point where the toms that have a lot of sustain on them. You'll get a drum fill and it'll just swallow up the whole mix for a bar or so. There's all that. However, what I will say is that these shortcomings are all very minor issues in the grander scheme of this gorgeous, entrancing, fat-ass record that I'm not going to say is the greatest thing to happen to hypnagogic pop.

I'm not going to say that, but it is the greatest thing to happen to the genre in the past 10 years. I think Cindy is leading the way until somebody shows this record up, which is going to be a tall order. I'm feeling a strong to a light 9 on this album.

Anthony Fantano, Cindy Lee, Forever.