MOJO RISING
FOR A RECENT MOJO profile, the Californian singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt was asked who had most influenced her new album, Here In The Pitch. Pratt nominated Cindy Lee. “A spectral siren in a fur coat singing timeless, lonesome melodies through the gloom,” declared Pratt of Lee, poetically. “My favourite guitarist by far. Nobody is making music like this. A truly underground artist.”
It was a concise but precise summary of Cindy Lee, the ghostly drag queen alter-ego of Patrick Flegel. Flegel – who uses they/them pronouns – is a Canadian-raised, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter and guitarist who was formerly the frontperson of Calgary post-punk quartet, Women, and who now makes eerily soulful music referencing classic ’60s US pop mostly unaccompanied on a variety of instruments under the Cindy Lee moniker.
It was also a timely recommendation. For a couple of weeks later, in April, a magnificent two-hour double Cindy Lee album called Diamond Jubilee suddenly appeared on Lee’s rickety website. It was greeted with adulation across the internet’s music sites, but the curious had to dig deep to find it. Diamond Jubilee, Cindy Lee’s seventh album since 2012, is only available as a single-track two-hour YouTube video, or you can pay $30 directly via their website for heavy-duty WAV files of all 32 tracks. This unusual form of label-free direct marketing serves both an important business and creative imperative. As Flegel explained in a rare 2020 interview, “I’ve lived below the poverty line my entire adult life. I love making music. If I weed out streaming services, I can make enough money to pay rent too.” Flegel then released a Cindy Lee album later that year called Cat O’Nine Tails directly to fans. “I ditched the record label [because] people are sending me money for downloads, which means I can pay my fucking bills,” they said.
Flegel responded by e-mail to MOJO’s interview request saying, “Cindy has stopped doing press, but thank you for listening.” One can therefore only assume that meeting financial commitments may not be an issue currently, given the wave of unanimous critical praiseDiamond Jubilee’s received, transforming a resolutely underground artist into the year’s word-of-mouth breakthrough. It’s certainly Cindy Lee’s masterpiece, a big step forward from previous releases where an acute ear for melody and Flegel’s intricate playing could be shrouded sometimes in noisy dissonance (what Flegel characterises as their
