Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee

I only listened to like 5 minutes of this album but it sounded like a mix of the garage pop stuff that was everywhere post-Black Lips exploding in popularity and that Twin Peaks TV music kind of sound…didn’t really get what was so noteworthy about it and the songs sampled didn’t really stand out either but I mean I definitely did not put in the work here.

Almost through listening to it, there are a few moments, mostly of scratchy guitar, that made me take notice, mostly i find this hard to pay attention to but nice to have on

finally digging in in full. prefer the second cd to the first by a large margin.

Completely random--I listen to new albums in their entirety two or three times a year--but this interested me enough to track it down. I've listened to the first disc three times in the car, the second disc once today. I think the first four songs are great--"Dreams of You" probably my favourite--and reminded me a bit of an over-the-top review I wrote of Psychocandy when I was just starting out in 1986. The rest of the first disc is pretty good. Based on just the one listen, I don't like the second as much, but--two-hour drive home later today--will give it another go.

Turned disc 2 up a bit and listened more attentively on the way home, and it got a little better. Moodier than disc 1-- some good late-night driving music. I don't think the album gets better than those first four songs ("Baby Blue" is pure "Just Like Honey," with an obvious nod to Badfinger), but all in all, I'd say it's worth at least 68% of whatever ink's been spilled on it.

You may know, but let the record show there was a lot of discussion of this record here:

thread to dis hyped releases that you don't get/don't like/wanna complain about

Thanks. Surprised that I seem to be alone in preferring disc 1. Something else I meant to mention: the estates of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer, who wrote the McCoys' (or, if you prefer, David Bowie's) "Sorrow," should sue Cindy Lee over "Baby Blue."

Yeah...how could there not be a backlash after that debut week?

Heard this today and am really enjoying it

Ctrl-F "needs an editor" hmmm...

I'm only about 20 minutes in, but so far it sounds like it starts with a few memorable songs and then deconstructs into sonically creative but meandering vibes that would make for nice background listening.

What prevents this record from being a masterpiece imo is the fact that about 30%-40% of the songs here feels half baked melody wise, with only one verse and one chorus or without a chorus at all.

Also disc 1 is better

fuck these guys for stealing the house music cindy lee's name

Pretty amazing live set - somehow gels the album experience for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0QKjcNaNbI

lots of quality guitar shredding in that video

I'm staying pleasantly lost inside this record, and it wouldn't be as appealing as a tight and punchy set of the peaks. It reminds me of Chromatics Kill for Love, a very assured aesthetic that could be tossed off or labored over but makes you feel like you are in the passenger seat for a long drive into the night.

I've also been enjoying this, sadly their entire tour was cancelled the other day

I was thinking of Steve Albini the last time I streamed this.

Custom tracklists for this album, I just don't want to see them

It reminds me of Chromatics Kill for Love, a very assured aesthetic that could be tossed off or labored over but makes you feel like you are in the passenger seat for a long drive into the night.

― Bertold Brak (bendy), Wednesday, May 8, 2024 12:19 PM (three hours ago)

i like this

i'm partial to the first disc but that's just more my personal taste. glitz, baby blue, all i want is you, dallas, always dreaming, wild one, flesh and blood, demon bitch ... i'm naming like the entire tracklist. i do like how the sharper songwriting kinda flickers intermittently throughout the second disc but the first disc really wallops me

I guess there is no established formula for a 2-hour album made up of actual songs but it does make sense for it to stretch out somewhat in the second half

('actual songs' as opposed to dub versions, jams with Clapton, kids singing Career Opportunities etc.)

I was hoping to see Cindy during the tour but the show near me came and went and I'd forgotten haha. The new album was very good though! Reminds me of the Aislers Set a tad...

okay, this has been one of my most anticipated things recently and we're settling in for a first listen now.

first few tracks sound absolute fire but i just have to ask why the fierce independence on the distribution? not even free on bandcamp, huh? don't get me wrong, i like the ethos a lot ("digital digging") but all told it took me 90 minutes to get it together. three different unzipping apps and tediously numerous file renamings later, hey now here we are.

is it weird of me to consider that rotary connection might be a touchstone for some of the sounds here?

retrofuture melodic squelch rock ftw. disc 2 is great! gonna need more time, but yep i like it a lot.

i think this sounds like the jukebox at malcolm mclaren's sex, but in alternate timeline. definitely has that john waters/david lynch vibe and i love how lofi it is. really good, a lot to calibrate. very firm 4 mics.

queer Chris Isaak vibes

hi the more i listen to this, the better it gets. i'm kind of in alignment with the pfork review in the sense that it feels like a highlight reel and i can't pick a favorite. kinda cliche, but yeah: if there's a lead single, it's "flesh and blood." holy smokes this is fantastic. i'm enthusiastically sticking with andy's 4 mics. gonna be a _great_ summer album.

but mostly i wanted to post not to ask about the "roots+influences" of this stuff ―it's like stereolab and could probably merit its own thread just on sonics alone― but to see what you guys thought about in terms of similarities to contemporary music? you know... that queer chris isaak/dark purple sunrise after being up all night thing.

reason i ask is because even before i heard this album, a lot of the things i was having show up in my algorithms are definitely occupying the same space. a couple that really stuck out to me, especially after hearing diamond jubilee―
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzGaER-aR7I
mega bog ― "wet moss" (2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t1i9G1R8t4
sepiatone ― "new world" (2001)

and then there's the entirety of the band soft location, who i can't recommend enough. also a ton of self-released west coast stuff that i don't wanna get into, but only for not wanting to divert away from this wonderful album. go listen to it!

so in a perfect world, "flesh and blood" dominates everything through late june, just for "all i want is you" to carry us into the second half of summer, triumphantly and appropriately.

More on the roots and influences tip, but I see some parallels to Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs" in terms of the sprawling ambition, lyrical themes, and ramshackle vibe.

Listening this week stirred up memories of The Lavender Flu's Heavy Air which I liked quite a bit when I came out, but then forgot about.

it’s not really pulling from the same exact places sonically but especially the first few times streaming diamond jubilee on youtube it took me back to my first times hearing ‘oh you’re so silent jens’ … something similar about, in o. nate’s words, “the sprawling ambition and ramshackle vibe.” jens is more verbose and humorous as a lyricist, but there’s a combination of doomed romantic moroseness in the lyrics and crackly lo fi warmth in the production on diamond jubilee (disc 1 in particular) that reminds me of early jens

it's very deerhuntery imo

yeah when my boyfriend listened to it for the first time he said it made him think immediately of atlas sound

I do like the way it reminds me of old doo wop and old rock n'roll in terms of vibe than sound (although occasionally sounding like that too). The length of it all does induce a bit of zone out but its good enough to keep you coming back to it. Im on my 3rd listen of it now.

"lou reed jams with michael rother"

I also feel there are some slight parallels to fellow Calgarian Ryan Bourne's album of lo-fi bedroom psych from last year, Plant City, co-produced by Calgary uber-scenester Chad Van Gaalen, whose label also has put out Cindy Lee's former band Women.

this just sounds like something on slumberland to me

"dracula" (the old man is back again!) is a jam

I'm hearing Jefferson Airplane here & there... good stuff

Finally on Bandcamp, with physical editions (CD & LP) coming in early 2025:

https://cindylee.bandcamp.com/album/diamond-jubilee

AOTY

About £80 for the 3xLP + shipping to the UK

Happily snagged this. (Digital download, obv.)

hell yeah, double CD

This is a good one for the double CD treatment

Already a smash success in just a couple of hours even if you're talking Bandcamp sales alone -- over one thousand copies, and even if that was just solely digital that'd be $20,000, and it's obviously not just that.

Almost 90 USD for the standard black vinyl and shipping to the EU is quite a lot, what are the chances this will end up in regular record stores in 2025?

Spotify too?

Nope, not on Spotify.

quickread of the first 30 or so posts and i'd guess 3/5 are industry plants?

totally plausible. wouldn't be surprised if cindy lee were 7/8 AI-generated

Some examples?

i don't know what to say, other than that if you really love 'the limit', then you're bound to find something on diamond jubilee (i don't know what you're looking for?) that strikes your fancy. it's not really apples and oranges (the quality of the songs) .. the songs and production of DJ (in general) might be a bit more refined, the levels not quite as unrestrained / ~hot~ (there's an amorphous beauty about 'the limit' where sounds bleed into atmosphere, bleeding into tape hiss and whatnot) but the songs are similarly *dank* and nuanced. there are vocal hooks and instances throughout DJ that are so very sweet, it does feel more concise (?) than 'the limit' (on the whole), more streamlined somehow. there are very few duds (if any) on the album. i'm sorry that i couldn't provide a more interesting / useful answer

quickread of the first 30 or so posts and i'd guess 3/5 are industry plants?

You got me, for post #20 in this thread I was paid with a grain elevator filled with diamonds

ilm is a street team hotbed

― Lowell N. Behold'n, thanks.

This appears to be back up on spotify again, confusing situation

On Apple Music too.

Vinyl shipped!

So glad to finally have a proper listen to the full thing, so so good. I'd dipped around here and there quite a bit, but this is my first full listen in order. "Government Cheque" really stood out for me today, but so did many others. Almost every song has at lease one really cool bit to recommend, even if just a guitar solo or change in the rhythm.

I've not had any notification from bandcamp about my LP yet

Did you order a color version? I've been reading that they shipped out the black vinyl first and some of the color options are coming out after that.

I did.

Somebody has sold one for $150/£118 but I wonder if they actually had their copy to sell yet?

https://www.discogs.com/sell/history/33140880

fwiw, I saw this posted on the H0ffman F0rums this past Friday, I didn't see that email myself:

Superior Viaduct said in their email blast that Gold is now shipping and they have a ton to process. Email notifications will be sent.

Drew Daniel posted a pic of his copy on the tt on Bluesky

tiny four-date tour announced

Empty Bottle, Chicago - November 5
Massey Hall, Toronto - November 6
Rialto Theatre, Montreal - November 10
Brooklyn Paramount, New York City - November 15

this is one of those albums that felt like an instant classic on first listen and yet somehow gets better every time i listen to it, which is still fairly regularly

yeah, most CDs I get I play a bunch for a week or so and then they go into gen pop, but this one stays next to the player, and probably will for the foreseeable future

The back half of Flesh & Blood where the tempo goes astray is one of the most joyous moments in recorded music

got tickets for the bk one

"Dreams of you / Visions of doom" basically sums up this record in six words.

I am retrospectively bummed I missed her at a small club show walking distance from my place a year and a half back soon after the YouTube playlist appeared, but it was the same night as another show I know I really wanted to see. Can't be everywhere at once!

I dl'd the album last spring when it came out and I liked it but didn't spend a lot of time with it, was revisiting recently and really fell in love with it again & got the LP from SV, it really kind of timeless in the sense if you has told me it was from 1972 or 1982 or 1992 or 2002 or 2012 I would believe you

the show i saw in 2023 with Freak Heat Waves opening was really great, cool that there are more planned

One of those venues is not like the other (Massey Hall is enormous)

Brooklyn Paramount almost exactly the same size as Massey

That is awesome. I’d fly in for any of these tbh

saw her last night in Toronto, she played for a little less than an hour by herself, she's so cool how she plays guitar without a strap

Seeing her Saturday. Very excited, everything I've seen so far has been getting me hyped

got tix to tomorrow night’s show :)

seeing the nyc show on friday... so there's this most anticipated show of my life...

when she booked this tour i thought based on the venue sizes that she'd be fleshing the show out to include a full band, pretty crazy she's going up in front of 2-3k people w/ just the guitar and backing track still

you’re gonna love it, jord

it would be interesting to see a version with a backing band but there’s something very special about one person on stage. this might be venue-specific but at the smoke machine and lights made it look like a german expressionist film

I idly checked Bandcamp sales on a whim just now -- this has sold over 18600 copies until now there so far, which I think makes it one of the biggest hits there all told (folks like Radiohead are higher with some efforts and I've no doubt King Gizzard flooded the zone a few months back, many more examples must exist, but those are numbers I've rarely seen regardless). Quick numbers suggest that's about $370K at least and as I noted way back that's obviously split between Lee, Superior Viaduct and Bandcamp but still, I'd call that a raging success and a hell of a paycheck for her, an honest to god success story.

That’s $200k for the artist, more like, but yes and yay