In the diamond's eye shining down on me - a single memory

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2024.

#2 : Diamond Jubilee - Cindy Lee

Before you even pressed play, Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee took you back in time. When it was released in March, the only way to hear it (aside from a YouTube video) was to go to a GeoCities website – a relic from the 90s internet, complete with multicoloured Times New Roman lettering – and download the audio files via Mega, the filesharing service beloved of 00s music blogs. The music itself went even further back, and indeed sideways, into a parallel dimension of 20th-century pop: doo-wop, glam, folk-rock, Nuggets-y psych/garage, Velvet Underground-style art-rock, French chanson, classic soul, 60s girl-group pop, synthwave, rockabilly and ambient all feature, emerging through lo-fi production as if corrupted on its journey from this spirit realm

The last one on the list I've not heard - or even heard of until I saw it pop up on various year-end lists. I have to admit I"m intrigued by The Guardian's write-up though - "doo-wop, glam, folk-rock, Nuggets-y psych/garage, Velvet Underground-style art-rock, French chanson, classic soul, 60s girl-group pop, synthwave, rockabilly and ambient" feels like quite the mix, so let's see what we've got here.

Ah - interesting. It's not on any of the major streaming services - YouTube or Bandcamp are the only options, it appears. I'm not generally a huge fan of the sound quality on YouTube, so let's go for a first and listen to an album off Bandcamp!

Ah - interesting. It's 32 tracks and 122 minutes long - they're not making this easy are they?

And having listened to it, my overall comment would be "ah - interesting". It really does have everything in there with different vocalists and instruments used across the album with no obvious flow - it also often changes styles mid-song, in all likelihood just to confound you. It also is indeed lo-fi production - some of it sounds like it was recorded in a bubble. One overall theme is a general retro vibe - I kinda got the feeling I was going through my parent's record collection, never quite knowing what I was going to be served up next.

Continuing in that vein, it meant that some bits turned up that you really quite liked but unless you made a specific note of where they were (which I did for "Kingdom Come") you didn't stand a chance of finding them again unless you worked your way through all of it - and you're really not sure you have the energy for that today. Overall, I think it's just a bit too much of a random lo-fi mish-mash for me, but there were certainly a load of interesting bits in there and there's no denying that a lot of effort went into it.

Wikipedia tells us this is Cindy Lee's seventh album - with Cindy Lee actually being Canadian Patrick Flegel, who cross-dresses when playing live (with Wikipedia including hypnagogic pop, Brill Building, no wave and noise in the genres section - I'm sure they make half of them up). The critics loved, loved, loved the album (Pitchfork gave it the highest rating they'd dished out in four years) and they all wrote a fine amount of nonsense saying it was a "foggy transmission from a rock 'n' roll netherworld" and "cassette discovered in the cabin of a great-uncle's shipwrecked houseboat" - it made #1 in quite a few of their year-end lists. Unsurprisingly, there's no chart action to talk about - that possibly comes with the territory of making it unavailable in all the normal places, but they are being boringly conventional by releasing it on vinyl and CD next year.

"Customers also listened to" - well, I suspect we'll never know but something like Sufjan Stevens feels like a safe bet to me. It's certainly an interesting listen with all sorts in there, but it's also definitely a lo-fi mish-mash - it won't be for everyone but, if you're so inclined, I think it's worth checking out for you to make your own mind up about it (just don't try your usual streaming service).

Just the one to go!

#4-3 - Two nicely understated albums
#1 - A fine album, but...