Diamond Jubilee

At first I said "oh no, another long, useless album from the tasteless community". But no, that was far from it. That was amazing, I loved it. Dracula is the best song (for now - I may change in the future).

Diamond Jubilee is a strange indie rock album by Cindy Lee. Strange in the sense that it is so long, so lo-fi, so hard to find on streaming media and still so intriguing. The tracks are sometimes more unfinished shapes of music, but it all works great. All combined it is a banger of an album and the best of 2024, though I understand it's not for everybody.

This album is available to listen to on Bandcamp: https://cindylee.bandcamp.com/album/diamond-jubilee One of my favorite albums of the last 10 years. I ordered a copy of it before I was 10 minutes into listening to it on Bandcamp when it was released. Very cool that this is on this list.

A little long, but very good.

Canadian musician Patrick Flegel's seventh album as Cindy Lee is an ambitious, sprawling collection that overflows with brilliant ideas. Some fascinating guitar work and vocals that perfectly contrast the raw, rattling instrumentation. Drawing heavily from 1960s pop with touches of The Beach Boys, Phil Spector girl-pop, and psychedelic rock. At over two hours and 32 tracks, Diamond Jubilee is undeniably too long. While the rambling, kitchen-sink approach has its appeal, the album's greatest strength is also its weakness. Cut this collection in half and you'd have a 45-minute masterpiece.

Lofi, 50s and 60s inspired, kinda cool stuff, just goes on too long

So nostalgic yet new at the same time. The songwriting throughout is just fantastic.

Holy shit what a gem, thanks for recommending this. Immediately added to the list of actually amazing new discoveries on here. 2 hours long, never felt bored. One of the most compelling atmospheres I've ever heard an album create. To steal the thoughts of a comment on the Youtube video I listened to this on: This sounds like a radio broadcast from a parallel dimension. Five outta five.

Okay so I’ve been doing this list for over three years now, and have encountered my fair share of albums that surprised me with how good they are. This, however, was the first time I’ve ever paused an album 25% of the way through so I could go and order the vinyl. This is a goddamn masterpiece.

Is this too long? Maybe. It doesn’t feel that way, though. I loved every minute of this and it was my first time listening. There’s a perfect blending of genres, and fantastic experimentation with both production and instrumentation. The vocals are angelic and both serve as another instrument while also providing the final bit of emotion required to get these songs to where Cindy wants them to be. I couldn’t find this on the usual go to apps for listening so I heard it from a guy on youtube that posted the whole album. I’m not sure if a lot of the songs are intentionally meant to end abruptly of if that’s a product of listening in the wrong place. Great album either way. Glad to have heard it. Great inclusion. 4/5

I'm not usually a fan of double albums, let alone triple albums, but this album is perfect to throw on and let play in the background while you work. Just really solid music throughout with plenty of variety. Overall just very calm and relaxed rock album with a lot of thought and effort put into it 4/5

Nostalgic yet modern, a marvel

This album is TOO LONG but it's also REALLY GOOD and it reminds me of Twin Peaks

This album was assigned to me on November 3, 2025. Today is February 19, 2026. Since this wasn’t easily accessible on Apple Music, and I was loathe to sit and listen to YouTube for a 3 disc 2+ hour selection this remained my only Did Not Listen album so far. Well, I ran out of albums for a while and decided to make an effort and listen to this. I’m glad I did! This is very interesting and pretty unique. Dreamy, with sounds that at times feel like maybe what The Shaggs might have evolved into after decades of practice… there’s a great and soothing charm to this that really appeals to me. I’m glad I did the work for this one!

An absolutely encompassing LP that sounds exactly like how driving through Midwest America feels. I’ve always been a fan of Flegel’s work since his defining years in the band Women, and his artistic career feels as if it’s been building towards an artistic statement like this. His characteristically angular, trebley guitar lines have softened into limber, fluid melodies that glide effortlessly across beautiful synths and punchy rhythms. The lo-fi production melds everything together, yielding a pleasing high-pass warmth that gives the LP its Americana feel. I never saw this one coming after the first Cindy Lee album, but what an incredible surprise; this project had always been so experimental and ethereal, but to have that energy focused into an uplifting warmth has produced an album that teems with life, hope, and an overriding sense that everything will be alright. Best that those who can’t be bothered to find this online miss out, this LP feels like something you have to find for yourself and has created one of the strongest senses of community I’ve ever felt in the indieheads space.

Unnnnngh, this is glorious! Sounds like Khruangbin spent too much time watching David Lynch stuff and not enough time sleeping. I evidently have this album confused with something else because I coulda sworn I'd listened to it due to it being on a bunch of year end lists for 2024, but that wasn't the case, and it wasn't the alt country I thought it was. 🤷 Very very happy to be introduced to this - thanks picker! 🫡 Fave tracks - "Diamond Jubilee", "Olive Drab", "I Have My Doubts", "Stone Faces", "Dracula", "To Heal This Wounded Heart", "Don't Tell Me I'm Wrong", "24/7 Heaven"

This was a very neat surprise. Varied, sprawling, and it stays interesting the entire time. I'm not a huge fan of that vocal filter, but it doesn't ruin the experience. Rounding up the 4.5, I liked this a lot

I'm only a week into the user albums, but I already think this album is a better representative of 2020's music creativity than most of what was on the list. Besides Little Simz there wasn't much that I was blown back by. This was a really fun exploration in so many genres, while maintaining a hazy mystique that made it enjoyable to listen to even with the length being 2 hours.

Album #4 (1001 challenge extended): "Diamond Jubilee" by Cindy Lee (2024) "Diamond Jubilee" is the seventh studio album (and a triple vinyl album at that) by Canadian band Cindy Lee, a project of Patrick Flegel. Hypnagogic pop (evokes cultural memory and nostalgia), psychedelic pop, indie pop, brill building (girl group music from the 1960's), slacker rock, noise pop and lo-fi. There's a few new ones. The album was originally released in full on YouTube. The band included Patrick Flegel (performance, engineering, production), Steven Lind (guitar, bass, drums, synthesizer strings, claps, engineering, production, mixing) and Joshua Stevenson (mastering). The album had wide-spread critical acclaim. A slow guitar which eventually gets louder opens the self-titled "Diamond Jubilee." Fingers snapping, synth strings. Drums come in midway through. Dreamy feminine vocals. A 60's psychedelic vibe. "Baby Blue" continues the 60's retro sound with a spy-like guitar. Layered harmonized vocals as they're trying to get someone's attention. This is very Velvet Underground. "Flesh and Blood" layers guitar strikes with a ringing-David Bowie "Heroes"-era guitar. A 70's sounding rock beat and bass. Feminine and masculine vocals. The pace picks up and the song ends with a distorted guitar. "Dracula" gets a soulful groove going with the guitar melody and beat. A high-pitched guitar melody overlayed with a synth. Echoing feminine vocals. An interesting 70's synth break. The music matches the lyrical themes of isolation. We hear that spy-like guitar again in "Lockstepp." An ominous-sounding synth. A weird drum ticking. Great mood-capturing music. "If You Hear Me Crying" has a handclap rock beat. A piercing guitar solo. Dreamy feminine-masculine vocals. The song gets louder with dueling guitar solos at the end. "Exclaim!" magazine's Kaelen Bell nailed the album's music description as "Built on strains of 50's girl group pop, lush 60's psychedelia, itchy 70's radio rock, lo-fi 90's clutter and sparkling production choices grafted on from some alternate universe." I love the use of the grafted here since that's exactly what is done. There's a song with a chunky garage rock style guitar and a dreamy synth. And it works. There's pyschedelic, fuzztone and spy-like guitars and retro elements including garage, 70's soul/pop, bluesy beat, the Velvet Underground, post-punk and movie-score like. The vocals are feminine and masculine, dreamy and buried. Yes, the album is long at 202 minutes but you can literally start and stop at any point and enjoy this album. So much to like here. Surely one of the best albums of the 2020's and a very high recommendation. 5 out of 5

Evocative of the old, weird Canada maybe that is quite insufficiently understood. One fully digs the haunted, distant, hollow-sounding effects, with lovely instrumental flourishes, which sit well with spooky-sweet/terrifyingly treacly girl-group vocals, landing on a net effect of lost late-60s classic. DIY in spirit but transcendent of that ghetto because too ingeniously conceived and superbly executed. Psych-folky, but richer, with "wall of sound" expansiveness. Lynchian and defiantly different, but rather more organically than performatively so. A case can be made that it goes on a bit too long but the quality never really fades and the interest is sustained throughout But just astonishingly good – thanks, recommender for turning one onto this most excellent record via your excellent choice. Rounding up because whyTF not and outta gratitude to recommender.

This below is the English translation of the review of Cindy Lee's *Diamond Jubilee* I have written for the music website Mowno: "Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic." This quote attributed to Jim Jarmusch perfectly captures the vivid and multifaceted impressions stirred by listening to *Diamond Jubilee* by Cindy Lee — impressions accompanied by mental images that inevitably evoke the worlds of Jim Jarmusch or even David Lynch. Rarely has an album so thoroughly questioned the boundary between pastiche and the expression of something far more visceral and personal. This record sounds unlike anything else and yet, through its carefree borrowing of increasingly vintage references, it simultaneously echoes entire swaths of Western popular music history. Hence the cinematic metaphor: it's that cinematic experience that rock music has embodied for the past seventy years; it's all those internal movies one imagines while listening to this album; and it's the main character from that imaginary film Cindy has shaped for her audience — a shimmering skirt here, a blue fringed wig there, an elegant little handbag resting at the hips, or a piece of gum nervously chewed onstage (admittedly far less elegant). These are all retro, kaleidoscopic extensions of a body of work that likewise draws from everywhere -- from those places where fantasy and reality mirror and blur into one another in the heart of what French "new wave" directors called "la nuit américaine.” Even if Patrick Flegel was born in Canada… Patrick Flegel? We need to rewind the film now, return to the beginning of the story if we want the viewer to follow the plot properly. Because much like the cinematic and pop-music figures her persona inevitably calls to mind — somewhere between Dorothy Vallens from Blue Velvet and the imagery cultivated by the countless girl groups churned out by the sixties — Cindy Lee is a fiction, an illusion. Cindy Lee does not exist. She is the drag-queen alter ego of Patrick Flegel, former singer and guitarist of the post-punk/indie band Women before its implosion at the height of its rise in the early 2010s. Preoccupations — then still called Viet Cong — emerged from those ashes under the direction of Matthew Flegel. Meanwhile, his brother Patrick remained in the shadows, releasing album after album without ever gaining recognition beyond relatively local underground circles across North America. And yet one remembers how haunting his vocal presence already was on gems like "Can't You See" or "Eyesore" from that gem of an LP that *Public Strain* was… It ultimately took the near-historic score awarded by Pitchfork to *Diamond Jubilee* to finally shine a spotlight on him/her — and on this latest lo-fi opus of staggering proportions, essentially the equivalent of two sixteen-track CDs to explore, available only on YouTube (and now Bandcamp), or as a download through Realistik Studios. Bypassing streaming platforms at a time when music has become an ephemeral and interchangeable consumer product, Flegel is likely trying to heighten the aura surrounding the work. A singular stance, fitting for an artist who exists entirely apart from the "norm". Very distinctive is also what the music on *Diamond Jubilee* is. From its title track — which opens the album with hypnotic fingerpicked guitar, slightly dissonant touches of Middle Eastern–tinged violin, and the languid groove of a deeply progressive soul bassline, heard again later on "Flesh and Blood" and "Dracula" — Patrick Flegel stretches time, plays with space and expectation, suggesting a slow camera tracking shot or an extended long take. And when “Cindy’s” voice finally appears, like a spectral figure emerging from fog at dusk, the realization is immediate: this celestial, ethereal voice feels as though it has already existed somewhere in our dreams of music and movie theaters. It sounds natural, tender, familiar. Its timbre seems as much the product of a rare talent as the one of handcrafted effects and layers of echo, allowing Flegel to shift between genders and genres with remarkable grace and ease. Cindy Lee moves from glam rock on "Glitz" to a sparse electro minimalism bordering on trip-hop in "Baby Blue", before drifting into stripped-down, aching ballads like "All I Want Is You", "Always Dreaming", and "Crime of Passion". With "Gayblevision" and "Lockstepp", the music occasionally veers into more elusive motorik or new wave territory. But most of the time, what unfolds is a timeless dream pop infused with classic-rock undertones, as on the magnificent "Dreams of You". Roy Orbison-style torch songs follow one another through the delicate "Government Check", "I Have My Doubts", and "Don't Tell Me I'm Wrong". The influence of The Velvet Underground — with or without Nico — bursts forth on "Demon Bitch" and "The Polarity's End". Tamla Motown-style rhythms cruise down the roads of Detroit on "Stone Faces" and the sublime "If You Hear Me Crying", before making an improbable stop at a rockabilly gas station with "Wild Rose"… On paper, such a profusion of styles might seem overwhelming, but Flegel works through sketches and impressionistic suggestions, sometimes even erasing vocal presence entirely on instrumentals that are themselves deeply cinematic — the ambient pieces "Realistik Heaven" and "24/7 Heaven" closing each disc, or the languorous lounge-jazz drift of "Darling of the Diskotheque". Through this instinct for restraint and breathing space, *Diamond Jubilee* paradoxically intensifies the addictive power of its melodies — melodies one could swear have already been heard a thousand times before. And perhaps they have, especially in the strangely familiar air of "Kingdom Come", a doo-wop bubble seemingly floating above a 1950s diner. It's as if the thing was broadcast from a universe that's very close to ours, and yet is never exactly the same -- a "Lynchian" trope indeed, uncanny and yet -- as the definition of the word indicates -- unmistakably familiar. Of course, this sense of familiarity is aptly summed up through the title of the record, as this “diamond jubilee” is very obviously the one of rock history itself. Said history is here condensed into two hours of solitary craftsmanship by an artist gifted enough to handle nearly every instrument on the record alone -- receiving only occasional assistance from Steven Lind of the electro-rock outfit Frankie Teardrop -- and at the same time spontaneous enough to let rhythmic irregularities and other mostly “happy” accidents remain intact throughout this self-produced work overflowing with endearing surprises. As when Patrick’s “real” voice suddenly replaces Cindy’s — or merges with it. To hear this, one need only listen to the dreamlike nursery-rhyme atmosphere of "What's It Going to Take", where the diva retreats into backing vocals to count off the inexorable passing hours of the night, or to "Durham City Limits", which also provides one of the album’s many jaw-dropping demonstrations of Flegel’s guitar playing. The former member of Women has indeed clearly retained from those noise and post-punk years a taste for angular riffs and sophisticated guitar interweaving, adding an abrasive extra dimension to the radiant simplicity of these songs. That same dimension can also be felt in Flegel’s fully solo live performances — although, for now, and judging by the videos available online, these appearances resemble arty, off-kilter performances worthy of the Club Silencio scene in Mulholland Drive more than conventional concerts. Once again, the line between artifice and authenticity becomes blurred, somewhere between the disguise of a character singing over pre-recorded backing tracks and the flashes of brilliance that emerge whenever that same character seizes a guitar. It is still unclear whether Flegel would benefit from assembling a real backing band capable of matching the wild ambition of *Diamond Jubilee*, or whether continuing down this solitary path is precisely what preserves the originality and emotional fragility of the project. What is certain, however, is that no trompe-l’œil has ever sounded this beautiful. You will find the original French version of this review in the link below: https://www.mowno.com/disques/cindy-lee-diamond-jubilee/ Post scriptum to the users who complained that the album was not available on streaming services: you are being such fucking idiots!!! There are so many things about the economic model of Spotify and the likes you should learn about that I don't even know where I should start... My original review is already too long as it is, so I won't bother explaining in so many details why those streaming services rip off 99% of the artists found on it -- especially since I'm not sure you guys have what it takes on an intellectual level to get it. Unless you already know those things, but yet feel unbothered by the issue, which in that case is even worse! What's fucking ironic is that Cindy Lee's album is now available on YouTube AND Bandcamp -- so it's basically as easy to find and go through as any stuff found on Spotify! So I guess I'll just let those particular one and two-star reviews contradict one another, laugh at the expense of their lazy writers, and then move on. Some "consumers" will always miss the bigger picture, and no string of words written on that topic will ever change any of it, unfortunately. 4.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums. 9.5/10 for more general purposes (5/5 + 4.5/5) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 101 (including this one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 113 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 238 ---- Hey Émile, j'ai répondu sous Demon Days ET ta sélection pour la users list ! 🙂

Rating: 7/10

I've been getting into Bandcamp recently and buying albums for a small cost - better for lots of smaller bands get a better cut. This is lo-fi and very 60's influenced. It's really unsettling and dreamy in places and I like it.

Really cool lo-fi record and one of my personal highlights from 2024, from an artist I’d never previously heard of. I didn’t get around to this until the end of the year - it’s great when you finally get around to listening to a constantly-hyped underground album and it actually lives up to your expectations

Two hours is a commitment but Diamond Jubilee earns it. The title track sets the scene and promises something special — and it delivers. Gayblevision and Dracula are standouts, Glitz grabs you with its switch in gears, and Kingdom Come and Stone Faces hit just as hard. Then it just... ends. No fanfare, no neat bow — it's gone. Had to go straight back for a second listen. Not on streaming so I bought this on Bandcamp, and honestly that feels right for this kind of album.

This has been on my radar for a while. I was always put off by the length. I was disappointed when it came off of Spotify and hadn’t got to it. So thank you to this list for forcing me over to Bamdcamp to get this one. Thought it was a great record and I need to listen to it more.

Learning that this is from a former member of Women made the music click. A good way to spend 2 hours

an eclectic low-fi collection of small ideas

Long but real nice

I tend to let the experience of listening to the whole album in one siting influence the score on here, and this one is just sooooo long... Of course, I resume full responsibility for not using mind-altering substances, knowing that this might have reduced my appreciation of the album.

I remember this being a big deal when it came out but due to it not really being on streaming, I didn't rush to check it out. I've harped on about how long albums are frustrating and while I like the music here, it's the same. This is way, way too long. It doesn't justify its length for its meandering and genre. At times it sounds like demo tapes. Cut it down to 45-50 minutes and it would be a solid album, but otherwise it's too unfocused and doesn't justify its lenght at all. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3.5/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Very dreamy indie-pop. For me, a double album of this is just a bit too much

Hypnagogic pop, psychedelic pop, indie rock, brill building, slacker rocknoise pop, lo-fi. Es muuuuy largo y todo el tiempo igual. Pero, bueno, agradable. Ni fu ni fa.

Clearly a lot of people really love this and I can see an appeal. On the other hand quite a lot of it sounds like it's being played through a metal trash can stuffed with lint. At better points, dreamy lounge music floating through some dim country bar off hours. Early in I thought I was likely to get very sick of it at length and to its credit that didn't really happen, but it did largely fade into the background of whatever I was doing. Interesting, but a triple album is a really aggressive way to introduce a band to a general population.

Found this on Bandcamp, like it to start with but it's a bit too long.

Odd production sound. Not bad, but truly a bit

I can greatly appreciate what is being done on this album. A colossal piece of lofi, nostalgic, dreamy music. It’s expansive and well curated. It’s also incredibly long. Actually, it’s been a week and the album is still playing. As interesting and enjoyable parts of this album are it lingers for a while and some of the lofi transitional instrumental parts drag on and could’ve probably knocked off 30-40 minutes of the album. I’d probably listen to it more if it was on streaming too to cut out some of the filler. 7.1/10

Weird and magical. Extensively so.

It's a nice sound but it's much too much to be a serious album proposition. It's every thought they ever had.

This is good but not for two hours.

Not available on Apple Music. Found a playlist on Youtube/Youtube Music though. Was pretty long. Kind of shoe-gazy, which I find disinteresting. Decent background music while working, but was somewhat forgettable to me.

Not on spoofy :'-)

The quintessential of a great concept with the worst execution of all time. I don't know if I reached the end, since my player was configured to restart after the end, and I'm unsure if I can distinguish each song from the others.

Just not for me I think. 3/10

I managed an hour, but 2 hours would have killed me. Make it 40 minutes and this would have been a "fine, here's a 3" kinda record.

2 hours?? GTFO I'm absolutely of the mindset that you've got to keep an album at *least* close to an hour - tops - unless there's some unquestionable theme or motif. I don't think that's an unreasonable statement of short attention span, but an album is a document right? A statement from the artist/s at a point in time. (please don't ruin my analogy by referencing Infinite Jest or Ulysses, etc, i'm on a roll) Not to mention this came out last year. OH the music? It's fine...ish, to a point - sort of a Beach Boys + Animal Collective lofi experience with far worse mix/production; really really would have lent itself to a 40 minute set max. More than a bit too laconic. Honestly, after being annoyed at about 30 minutes I tried to just relax and let this wash over me as so many others have...which didn't work. Don't really love it at all. 5/10 2 stars. IMO: Belonged in the book? No.

Too long and not anything for me to compliment. Boring but not offensive I guess.

I don't care for the vocals/vocal style used here. I can't stand the whiny/moany/echoy sounds. The music itself was ok but not enough for me to rate this any higher.

No album needs to be 2 hours long.... May have enjoyed it more if it didn't overstay its welcome so bad... This is like lo-fi noise pop? It sounds like it was recorded in mono and played through an AM radio, which gives it a bit of a nostalgic feel. Favourite songs: GAYBLEVISION, Olive Drab, Diamond Jubilee, Dreams of You, Wild One, Glitz, All I Want is You, Durham City Limit Least favourite songs: Kingdom Come, Realistik Heaven, Deepest Blue, To Heal This Wounded Heart, Golden Microphone, 24/7 Heaven 2/5 (woulda been 3 but it's just waaayyy to fucking long)

I can see why Diamond Jubilee might appeal to some people, it has a vibe to it, but I don't think it delivers very well. Production marrs the whole thing, the vocals are impossible to connect with, the 60s sound is there but almost inauthentically, it's just a bit disappointing. 2.

No need for any album to be this long

No está

Not on Apple Music or Spotify which as you know means auto one star sorry!!!!!!

Unable to listen to this on Spotify

There should be a rule that albums that are only available on YouTube should be ineligible. Also, far, far too long. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Immediate bad mood.

I think my principle of starting off releases with extremely limited distribution with the lowest possible score is fairly well-established now, and this has to apply here because it is yet another album apparently only to be found on BandCamp. That it stretches out to over 2 hours is also antisocial, so it gets no additional points from that. At the time of writing, I'm approximately a fortnight into it, and I have no particular desire to keep going. The music on offer varies wildly between "This is moderately interesting" and "This is pretentious bilge". It could easily have stood to be trimmed, and this perhaps goes back to the first point of it only being available via bandcamp. If there'd been someone in the picture whose job it was to make it commercially viable as a release, vast swathes of the crud would have been chopped out, and that no doubt would have made it better. As it stands, there's nothing sufficient in this to make me think it's worth bothering with, and the piss-take distribution and duration make it fully worth a single, solitary star.