Cindy Lee :: Diamond Jubilee

Diamond Jubilee feels like a throwback to a different, weirder, cooler, better era in independent music. An era where a record such as this one — a record not available on streaming services, that can only be listened to on YouTube and via WAV files available for purchase on the artist’s website, and which was birthed into the world with no advanced single or press, that eschewed the long and laborious album rollout, and so felt like an artifact from space crash landed onto Earth — wasn’t so tragically uncommon.

That Last Train Is Back Again: A Conversation with Cindy Lee

Born Patrick Flegel, musician Cindy Lee walks around Seattle chain smoking cigarettes while his brother’s band, Preoccupations, plays a set for KEXP. He is surrounded by huge concrete slabs and dons an orange ski cap. We spoke via Zoom and for a while, we couldn’t see or hear him. When we do, he sort of looks like someone without a cellphone. Someone who walked into the last Radioshack and stole a few things. He is not in drag. Not yet. He looks like a man.