Bleep

There’s much to be said about the roles of nostalgia and hauntology in reviving vintage music styles, but when Patrick Flegel looks to the girl group sound of the 60s via the medium of their Cindy Lee character, what results is a total embodiment of scenes past with timeless, blistering sonic experimentation. What’s Tonight To Eternity is the project’s fifth album, presenting another spectral exploration of the singers and style icons that Flegel holds dearest.

What’s Tonight To Eternity once again finds Cindy Lee setting free songs that could have been written for The Supremes, allowing them to drift off into the ether as they are fogged by tape hiss and reverb. As we tiptoe into these tracks, we find the smudged beauty of Atlas Sound, the legacies of Patsy Cline or Irma Thomas skirting the walking bass and bright trilling pianos, with Cindy Lee’s distant vocals evoking the torch songs of lamenting cabaret singers. But when the glittering harps of ‘I Want You To Suffer’ contrast against jagged, reedy strums, all comparisons disappear: the ghosts of doowop and rock ‘n’ roll mask self flagellating lyrics that come to the fore with mangles shots of noise, dissolving into a frozen organ dirge in the aftermath.

Indeed, these tracks render the brittle quality of old wax discs and unearthed tapes with brutal emotionality. Smooth, romantic strings and dextrous guitar licks now blaze with intensity, traditional pop and soul chord progressions are corroded in 21st century experimentalism, and bright eyed glistening melodies are washed in torrents of guitar abstraction. With U turns into spacey synth odysseys where metallic fizzes and starlit arpeggios are knocked down from the sky by an octave or two, and swung rhythms add sly smiles to the dark, swirling melodies, Cindy Lee’s stage hosts an intense and wondrous performance.