The Best Albums of 2024
Anxious Sound
10
The Healer
Sumac
4-Song LP
Released June 21 on Thrill Jockey
Favorite tracks: New Rites
09
Souvenirs
Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
8-Song LP
Released February 23 on Mississippi Records
Favorite tracks: Clouds Moving on the Sky, Where Is the Highway of Thought?, Like the Sun Shines on Meadows
08
Hex
Jon Mckiel
10-Song LP
Released May 3 on You've Changed
Favorite tracks: Hex, The Fix, Memory Screen Pt. 1, Concrete Sea
07
Read the Air
Marbled Eye
10-Song LP
Released March 22 on Summer Shade
Favorite tracks: In the Static, Spring Exit
06
The Foreign Department
Astrel K
11-Song LP
Released March 8 on Tough Love
Favorite tracks: Darkness At Noon, Firma, The Foreign Department, Daffodil
05
Up On Gravity Hill
METZ
8-Song LP
Released April 12 on Sub Pop
Favorite tracks: No Reservation / Love Comes Crashing, Wound Tight
04
Wall of Eyes
The Smile
8-Song LP
Released January 26 on XL
Favorite tracks: Wall of Eyes, Teleharmonic, Friend of a Friend, I Quit, Bending Hectic, You Know Me!
03
Distant Call: Collected Demos 2000-2006
Broadcast
14-Song Collection
Released September 28 on Warp
Favorite tracks: Tears in the Typing Pool, Come Back to Me, Distant Call, Valerie, Ominous Cloud, Flame Left from the Sun
02
Spell Blanket: Collected Demos 2006-2009
Broadcast
36-Song Collection
Released May 3 on Warp
Favorite tracks: March of the Fleas, Mother Plays Games, I Run in Dreams, Follow the Light, Tunnel View, I Want to Be Fine, Grey Grey Skies, Puzzle, Join in Together
01
Diamond Jubilee
Cindy Lee
32-Song 3xLP
Released October 23 on Superior Viaduct
Favorite tracks: Diamond Jubilee, Baby Blue, Dreams of You, All I Want is You, Realistik Heaven, Dracula, Don't Tell Me I'm Wrong, 24/7 Heaven
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.
