Bleep

Diamond Jubilee has been lauded as the breakthrough of Patrick Flegel’s Cindy Lee project, but Flegel’s name was hardly unknown before: a fixture in the Canadian indie circuit since 2004, their time in post-punk band Women is well documented, and 2020’s What’s Tonight to Eternity garnered praise and a Polaris Music Prize longlist placement. Diamond Jubilee isn’t so much a breakout, then, as it is a duly celebrated, carefully crafted magnum opus.

Their explorations of 60s girl groups and rock ‘n’ roll mixed into harsh noise sound collages and synthwave epics have received such heightened acclaim that Cindy Lee may be one of the most convincing proposals yet for a widely accessible noise pop. The project has always been primed with hypnagogia and hauntology, yet all these influences are filtered into arguably their most lucid material to date on Diamond Jubilee, with expert songwriting echoing greats like the Gershwin brothers and the Brill Building scene as though it were a compilation of hidden gems saved from dusty 78s, doused in plate reverb splash, microphone feedback, and cathartic eruptions of prickly distortion.

Dexterous, arpeggiated riffs slowly ebb and flow in, clicking fingers keeping pace before the drums pulse, and then the engine revs on the motor oil-drenched ‘Glitz’, welcoming you to a grand two-hour road trip. It’s not all easy listening, as the jovial layers of strums drop for ominous zithers and gongs. This is part of what makes these tracks so exciting: their tendency to crash into a grisly breakdown at any moment, like ‘Flesh And Blood’, where synths dazzle and sunrise into melty guitars. The vocals of a delicate chanteuse from decades past stay enticingly lo-fi, while a tasteful “doo doo doo” glues it all together.

Cindy Lee pairs the gorgeous and lilting with the emphatically shredding on Diamond Jubilee, perfecting their sound with their most generous release yet.