Cindy Lee is the solo project of Patrick Flegel who has been releasing music under the moniker since 2018. Diamond Jubilee, their latest album, caused noise in the indie-sphere as it was only released via YouTube and a stripped-down geocities website. This limited release gave the album even more of an underground “if you know you know” quality which spiked internet chatter. It’s a 32-track masterpiece that clocks in at just over 2 hours. As we write this article, the video has gained 300k+ streams in just a few weeks since it’s release on 3/30/2024.
At Soda Bar, Cindy Lee came on stage immediately after Freak Heat Waves with no intermission to give anybody in the audience a chance to adjust, and went right into their “performance”. Performance is in quotations since it felt more like watching performance art over a live music event. There was however an exception to this when Pat would pick up their guitar for the solo parts throughout the set. The crowd looked partially excited, confused, but were all the same completely engrossed by the 40-minute set. Cindy Lee played only songs from the new album (Diamond Jubilee) with good reason – because a good majority of the crowd were only familiar with the artist after reading the 9.1 Pitchfork review. Much like the crowd, who was expecting a great show from a great artist, who just put out a great record, we were left unexplainably let down by Cindy Lee’s set. Don’t get me wrong, the set did have its moments – any time Pat picked up their guitar, the energy in the crowd, hearing the melodies that so many of us were already familiar with. But overall, the set left you feeling a little hollow – like there should have been more than only a backing track and minimal instrumental use.
Diamond Jubilee is a journey through the past 50-60 years of pop music and maybe this is Pat’s way of demonizing the current state of pop music – which is a lot of backing tracks with very minimal emotional investment from the artist and the team behind the music. So the difference between Cindy Lee and any pop artist is that Pat is aware of who they are making music for. They are making pop music for people who are too cool to enjoy pop music. And Pat was letting the audience know that although this set wasn’t what you were expecting, you are still going to love it.
A friend was with us that night with no prior knowledge of Cindy Lee or the new album, who served as sort of a control group for this hypothesis. While acknowledging the music was great, they walked out of the venue not sure what to think of the performance and I think that speaks to what Cindy Lee was going for.
The album (with an optional paypal donation) is available for download here: https://www.geocities.ws/ccqsk
Listen to the full album below, and beneath that, check out a video of the full set from Soda Bar.
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