The 5 Best Songs on Cindy Lee's Diamond Jubilee

Diamond Jubilee is an album that rewards obsession. Ever since Patrick Flegel surprise-released their magnum opus (and album-of-the-year contender) in March under their drag altar ego Cindy Lee, indie publications, YouTube commentators and hipsters everywhere have been immersing themselves in its unique brand of hypnagogic pop, heaping praise on its creator, and pining for a time when the music industry and music press were more inclined towards these types of outsider masterpieces. 

It almost seems like the album was designed to encourage this intense fandom, to evade the casual listener. For starters, it's notoriously hard to access—until very recently, it was only available via a 2-hour stream on YouTube or for download on GeoCities (yes that GeoCities, the antiquated web hosting service from 1994). I, for one, spent several hours in a Berlin AirBnb struggling to sync the downloaded .wav files across my various devices, and, for a while, could only listen repeatedly to the measly six tracks that successfully made it over to my phone. On a particularly long subway trip, I tried to cue up the YouTube album stream for some commute-time listening but accidentally scrubbed across the album numerous times and drained my battery in the process. Suffice it to say, Patrick made me work for it.

Ever since my various false starts, I've been gradually immersing myself in the album's 32 mesmerizing tracks. And, in short, the album is as good as all the indieheads have been saying. But I get it. An album like this can be hard to sink your teeth into—there's no Spotify page where you can quickly navigate to the most popular songs; there's no "Cindy Lee Essentials” playlist on Apple Music. Frankly, with an album as long and obscure as Diamond Jubilee, it can be hard to know where to start. 

So: for folks curious to hear what all the hype is about, who haven't been chugging the Cindy Lee Kool-Aid for the past 6+ months, I've highlighted my five favorite tracks off the record below. I've also included a timestamp next to each one in case you'd prefer to scrub across the full-length album stream on YouTube to hit the highlights. 

Hopefully this helps you dive into the strange and ghostly world of Cindy Lee. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. 

5. Flesh and Blood (29:49): As its name may suggest, "Flesh and Blood" celebrates all things corporeal, all things sensual. "I'm only Flesh and Blood," Flegel sings, as if they have to apologize for being captivated by sensual delights: inhaling the smell of rose perfume, cloaking themself in moonlight, losing themself in the stars. And it's fitting that a song about surrendering to your senses, with its comforting chord progression and wistful melodies, is also one of the warmest and most inviting tracks on the album.

4. Kingdom Come (36:05): If Diamond Jubilee were a corporate-style word cloud, I'd bet "yearning" would be somewhere near the middle, blown up in big blue bubble letters. So much of Diamond Jubilee feels like it's gesturing towards something ineffable, something lost, people and places just out of reach; and more than any other song on the album, "Kingdom Come" evokes that feeling of longing. Its lilting melody, cascading guitar lines, and trilling strings all lend the track a sweet sadness, underscoring the poignancy of lines like “I miss you dear friend/I only want to hear your voice again.” It's also one of the most immediately accessible, even playlist-able tracks on Diamond Jubilee, and maybe the best entry point for someone new to the Cindy Lee.

3. All I Want Is You (16:14): Just over 15 minutes into Diamond Jubilee, the music all but disappears and Flegel's vocals penetrate the mix like sunlight piercing through clouds. It's as if Flegel is clearing the way for a simple and striking declaration, sung in a haunting falsetto: “All I’ve got is the truth/all I want is you.” It's a quiet, touching track that still features a few quintessential Cindy Lee surprises—I'm thinking of the blistering electric guitar that rips through the mix at 1:52 with its stunning major pentatonic runs, or the song's casual tempo reset at 2:15. In the midst of an album so epic and sprawling, "All I Want Is You" is a refreshing reminder that sometimes less is more.

2. Government Cheque (1:14:38): "Government Cheque” starts lazily, with a slow, yawning guitar. It feels like waking up hungover on a Texas Plain—there's an aimlessness to it, a somberness, a sense of regret. Against this listless backdrop, Flegel unsuspectingly introduces the song's main refrain in a minor key: “I can’t go on living the way that I do/I can’t go on living without you.” The song is hopeless, resigned. And then suddenly it's not. The tempo accelerates as the listener is dropped into an entirely different track. The same lines, delivered so morosely a minute-and-a-half before, become a grand, defiant statement, an anthem of self-discovery and self-respect: “I can’t go on living the way that I do/I can’t go on living without you.” The phrase repeats over and over until it becomes a mantra for Flegel, transformed from a confession of despair into an almost joyful declaration of self-reliance. 

1. If You Hear Me Crying (1:29:04): No song on Diamond Jubilee grooves as hard as “If You Hear Me Crying.” The swinging bassline and guitar riff that open the track plant the listener smack-dab in the middle of some surreal and gaudy lounge, seemingly conjured out of David Lynch's imagination. It's fun, it's catchy, and like the rest of Diamond Jubillee, there's something deliciously off about it. That feeling of surreality only grows deeper as the track abruptly shifts to a disorienting string motif in a completely different time signature, and Flegel returns for a spine-tingling vocal performance, perhaps the most haunting of their career. For an album that overflows with nostalgia, yearning, and hope, “If You Hear Me Crying” is a fitting thesis statement, a musical manifestation of that ineffable pang words could never describe.