Anxious Sound
Albums of the Year
2024
S/T
Universal Order of Armageddon
Numero Group
LP
The Healer
SUMAC
Thrill Jockey
LP
Hex
Jon Mckiel
You've Changed
LP
Up On Gravity Hill
METZ
Sub Pop
LP
Distant Call - Collected Demos 2000-2006
Broadcast
Warp
LP
Spell Blanket - Collected Demos 2006-2009
Broadcast
Warp
LP
Longlegs OST
Zigli
Mutant
LP
S/T by Dr. Dog
S/T
Dr. Dog
We Buy Gold
LP
Read the Air
Marbled Eye
Summer Shade
LP
The Foreign Department
Astrel K
Tough Love
LP
Wall of Eyes
The Smile
XL Recordings
LP
Diamond Jubilee
Cindy Lee
Superior Viaduct
3xLP

Personhood. Dreams. Sun Records. Empty towns. Bus stations and train yards. Trying to find my way back to you. Brian Wilson. The Velvet Underground & Nico. Nico solo. Public Strain. Death to devices. Death to memes. Death to the vacant wave. Only you. Nancy Sinatra. T Rex. The Castiles. Lost songs by The Shangri-Las beamed from a distant planet. The past is gone. The past is now. True expression. Fuck what they think. The underground. The road, the rail, the sun, the (silver) moon. The guitar. The early 1960s. Longing. The magical properties of recorded noise.

These are just some of the thoughts that have entered my mind while listening to Diamond Jubilee, the hypnotizing, boundaryless 32-track collection of music released by Cindy Lee (Patrick Flegel) earlier this year, first in digital-only format and more recently as a 3xLP vinyl edition by Superior Viaduct.

Across the album's 32 tracks, Flegel cross-pollinates haunting melodies, intricate arrangements, and distinctive pop sensibilities. The eerie splendor of Glitz. The odd exuberance of Olive Drab. The dissonant, screeching guitar trance of I Have My Doubts. The shimmering instrumental elegance of Realistik Heaven. The Khruangbin-esque funk of Dracula. There are so many turns. So many hooks. The ideas are as limitless as Flegel’s capacity to express them.

Diamond Jubilee is a wonderfully sprawling work—errant but never uneven—blending nostalgia and here-and-now existence, deeply rooted in the psychedelic echoes of 60s pop but unquestionably new. It's such a deep well, and it captures the strange miscellany of human existence with such sweet idiosyncrasy that when it ends, the only thing to do is play it again.