About

Cindy Lee is the brainchild of singer / guitarist Patrick Flegel. While some may know Flegel from their time spent in Canadian experimental indie band Women, Cindy Lee has spent the past four years crafting songs that push and pull in opposing directions – from tales of tragedy laced with haywire distortion to moments of breathtaking beauty.

On Malenkost, Flegel combines everything that makes Cindy Lee so essential: heart-wrenching romantic pleas, rough shards of noise and twilit ballads. Featuring the lo-fi pop single "A Message From The Aching Sky," Malenkost sounds like Deerhunter playing The Supremes or vice versa.

Superior Viaduct's imprint W.25TH presents the first of many Cindy Lee releases. Spectral and timeless, the music of Cindy Lee is hauntingly familiar yet of another plane, a magical collision of Brill Building hooks and uncompromising experimentation.

"Cindy Lee is intensely dark and cathartic, an eerie fever dream of fleeting, utterly heartbreaking classic girl-group melodies ... one of the best things we have heard all year." – Gorilla vs. Bear — (via Label)

—

I am a bit late to this release but, really, don't let that diminish the importance of this statement: Malenkost by Cindy Lee is one of the most striking and original albums I've heard so far in 2017. Released on the W.25TH imprint of the Superior Viaduct label a few weeks back, Malenkost is a set of near-otherworldly recordings which are the fruits of the creativity of Patrick Flegel, previously of the Canadian band Women. He has here crafted some incredibly distinctive work, work that defies easy description, frankly.

If "No Worth No Cost" bristles with the slightest hint of the sort of early Joy Division-kind of approach to post-punk, the beautiful-and-strange "Always Lovers" recalls Broadcast, or even tunes from that "Radiator Lady" in Eraserhead (1977). At their best, Cindy Lee can marry discordant noise with more accessible elements to produce something nearly accessible ("Hopeless In A Trance"), while at other times the elements that seem so harsh are put into the service of songs that, like those on the first His Name Is Alive album, skirt at the edges of both ethereal rock and more conventional forms of alt-rock ("I've Seen His Face Before", "A Message From The Aching Sky"). Still, despite the moments of nearly obviously lovely music here on Malenkost, there are others ("Coroner Of The State") that suggest the pervasive and huge influence -- (understandably so, of course) -- of both early Velvet Underground releases, as well as pre-VU John Cale recordings. Similarly, "Death Sentence" near the end of this long-player clearly owes a huge debt to Cale-produced Nico stuff, the icy beauty here positively dripping out of the speakers (or headphones, as may be the case).

In spots, Flegel's approach seems to be a near-avant-garde one, the music harsh on purpose as the more conventional moments are subsumed in clanging noise. At other times, Flegel allows the beauty of the compositions to be highlighted, even as a near-Shaggs-like sense of abandon pervades the performances, however briefly. Malenkost is very nearly impossible to describe, as you've seen if you've read this review, but it remains one of the few truly original releases of the first half of 2017. — (via A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed)

—
Initially unleashed on tape by Vancouver label Isolated Now Waves and subsequently internationally on Superior Viaduct’s W.25th, Malenkost hears the shape of Pat Flegel aka Cindy Lee’s sounds to come with a daring oscillation of obfuscated jangle, distorted bliss outs and aching rock ’n roll love songs. It’s definitely more far out than the epic Diamond Jubilee, but nevertheless contains kernels of that album’s timeless pop songs, as derived from a diet of ‘50s rock ’n roll and girl groups, ’60s psych soul and ‘80s no wave license.

Thee dozen songs bleed with a timeless appeal skewed by zealous levels of distortion that don’t distract but rather enhance the feeling of hallucinatory detachment and psychedelic soul. The levels range from pure needling garage psych heck sweetened with snagging hooks on ‘No Worth No Cost’, to loneliest ballads heard from a haunted bathroom on ‘Always Lovers’ and ‘Prayer of Baphomet’, to wired and thrashing garage psych on ‘Hopeless in a Trance’, or proper detuned wrangling in ‘Cash Money’, with the distorted clouds clearing to reveal pure indie-pop songwriting on the likes of clear standout ‘A Message From the Aching Sky.’ — (via Boomkat)

Vinyl Tracklist
A1 No Worth No Cost
A2 Always Lovers
A3 Hopeless In a Trance
A4 Cash Money
A5 I've Seen His Face Before
A6 Gallows Smile
B1 A Message From The Aching Sky
B2 Coroner Of The State
B3 Claim Of Vanity
B4 Prayer Of Baphomet
B5 Death Sentence
B6 Hash Angel

↓
Label: W.25th
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue
Reissued: 2025 / Originally Released: 2017
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Rock, Noise, Lo-Fi

File under: Alternative // Indie // Pop
⦿