Only killing time: The marvel of Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee
Sometime last year, I came across a photo in my phone that I didn’t remember taking. The shot showed the overpass to Calgary’s Anderson LRT station from the south, with patchy, melting snow on the ground. It’s a train station at which I’ve boarded or disembarked multiple times each week all year. The picture was unremarkable.
The answer to that mystery revealed itself weeks later when I opened Cindy Lee’s 2024 album Diamond Jubilee on my computer, and I saw a familiar thumbnail in the accompanying album art. In addition to its cover — a comic-book avatar of Lee sitting atop train cars parked at the real life Alberta Terminals Ltd. grain bins alongside the Crowsnest Path highway in Lethbridge — there was the same photo of Anderson Station. The wonder of art intersecting with life is one of the great joys of exploration and discovery. Rarely does that manifest itself quite so close to home.
Identification with physical space certainly plays a role in my feelings about Diamond Jubilee, a sprawling, dizzying odyssey with which I have spent many hours this year. Patrick Flegel — the mind behind Lee, and formerly the frontman of Women — occupied these same spaces as me, rode in the same train cars, walked on the same streets, and, vitally, felt the same things. And these feelings, along with a vast swirl of influences (most clearly Twin Peaks, right down to the evocation of Sheryl Lee’s name), formed the foundation of a monumental, life-affirming work of art. It is staggering.
The music is simple, in the way The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” is simple. That word, though, undersells the work; these arrangements are intricate, layered, endlessly surprising, like Lou Reed transported forward a half century. And the directness of the lyrics continually drives at these beautiful, universal feelings. “My only memory/always of you.” “I can’t go on living the way that I do/I can’t go on living without you.” “If this is heaven, I’m going straight to hell.” “I’m only flesh and blood!!” My heart aches listening to Lee’s pining.
There are too many moments to isolate, but I’ll single out one piece of guitar virtuosity from each disc. First, the ending of “If You Hear Me Crying,” as the song quiets to only that beautiful riff, before Lee throttles the overdrive. Then, there’s “Kingdom Come,” a marvel of pop songwriting, standing out as what’s likely to be the album’s most enduring masterpiece. That opening riff is as joyous as anything I’ve ever heard, begging for release, all set against this stark grief: “I miss you, my dear friend/I only want to hear your voice again.”
There’s some merit to a White Album comparison, in terms of scope and ambition and vision. But that analog comes best into focus with Diamond Jubilee‘s disc-closing tracks, “Realistik Heaven” and “24/7 Heaven” — orchestral flourishes swelling, the hum of distant radio waves, cotton in a blizzard, slipping back into sleep. A farewell transmission.
(To apply the classic White Album exercise, here’s my stab at a single-disc Diamond Jubilee):
1. “Diamond Jubilee”
2. “Glitz”
3. “All I Want Is You”
4. “Always Dreaming”
5. “Flesh and Blood”
6. “Kingdom Come”
7. “Demon Bitch”
8. “I Have My Doubts”
9. “Stone Faces”
10. “Government Cheque”
11. “Deepest Blue”
12. “To Heal This Wounded Heart”
13. “Golden Microphone”
14. “If You Hear Me Crying”
15. “Durham City Limit”
16. “24/7 Heaven”