The one that got away. There's always at least one and this year for It Starts it seems it's set to be Cindy Lee's magnificent and uncontainable Diamond Jubilee, which a friend has been telling me about the wonder of. But I only recently tracked this down and began listening to it a few days back. Now I've found I can't stop
Cindy Lee are a band I've discovered..Or at leasr a persona or collective. Not some New Pop siren of the sort oldies like myself have shied away from because they've given up trying to keep up. Anyhow I've always got Madonna if I want that malarkey. But it's nothing to do with that, it's a grouping that certainly sounds like a genuine band or at least the idea of one. The songwriting vehicle for Canadian Patrick Flegel who used to be in Women. That's a band in the more traditional sense BTW, for clarity's sake.
Diamond Jubilee is a formidable proposition. It's over two hourse long for god's sake, if you've got two hours to kill, and the package will cost you getting on to 75 quid if you want a vinyl version. Yes precisely. Yikes. I won't be buying it I'm afraid. Much as I love it.
But it's certainly a marvellous sounding album and I'm not surprised that it's ranked so highly on so many end of year lists this year including getting the Number One slot from the consistently insufferable Pitchfork.They're so full of themselves those guys. They also gave the record the highest mark they'd given any record for four years. Attention seekers. Narcissicists.
Don't blame Cindy Lee though for those who leap onto their bandwagon because this is a magnificent Rock & Roll listen of the type I'd imagine the great Nick Cohn himself would doff his cap at if he still pays attention to this kind of stuff. Nick Kent too. David Lynch
In a great Rock & Roll tradition, there's a cross dressing alter ego narrative going on here. Hey, it's almost 2025, and that's what Bowie and Eno got up to way back when and what they'd be doing again if they were coming up now..It's got all the thrilling panache of their best Zeitgeist records. A sense of what's gone on and what to do with it to take it where it needs to go next.
All two hours of it bleeds the doomed romance, menace and dark glamour of the early Sixties and the first couple of seasons of Mad Men. Dirty Dancing. Make yourself a list. Brill Building Spector Sound, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, The Ronettes, The Four Seasons, The Shangri Las, Del Shannon. The Wandererers OST. But much more than that too. This is a hughly contemporary record as well as one that wallows in the remote but immediate glamour of a particular bygone golden era.
That modernity is in the packaging and the sales pitch. This is not on Spotify. Or any other streaming service, Best listened to on YouTube in its enrirety. Frankly it's Lo Fi Wizadry with widescreen immediacy deeply retro impulses and curring edge instincts and it's quite gorgeousand mindbowing in every respect. I'll be listening to this way into 2025. At least. Respect !
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