No. 50 - Who is Cindy Lee? edition
Cindy Lee and the long arc of Calgary post-punk band Women
Hey! It’s been a minute. But here’s the 50th edition of Kool Kids Music Club. That’s a lot of editions! For the heads, thanks for sticking around. For the noobs, welcome. Hopefully you’re finding these somewhat insightful, or at least discovering some new artists to jam to. I’ve got some new ideas in the hopper that will be coming your way very shortly. Until then, enjoy…
Who the fuck is Cindy Lee?
You might have thought that to yourself recently, as critics and fans heap praise on Diamond Jubilee, the Calgary musician’s new un-streamable, 32-track double album. I mean, who in their right mind uses GeoCities in 2024?
The short answer is that Calgary-born musician Patrick Flegel does. Flegel created Cindy Lee as his lo-fi pop diva alter ego, performing in drag at Cindy Lee’s live shows. He’s released music as Cindy Lee for over a decade, mostly maintaining an aggressively low profile.
After 2020’s lauded What’s Tonight for Eternity threatened to expose the project to a bigger audience, Flegel took three years off (I’m sure the pandemic contributed/helped) before returning with Diamond Jubilee. Its idiosyncratic take on 1950s and 60s pop, doo-wop, and rockabilly found an even larger audience, despite (or perhaps because of) Flegel’s insistence on using non-traditional distribution methods. The record isn’t on any streaming platforms and there is no physical record, CD, or tape to buy. There’s just a YouTube link, where the entire album is presented as one single, unskippable track, and the GeoCities link where you can download the album as .WAV files and edit metadata in iTunes like it’s 2012.
But to properly answer the question I posed off the top, cast yourself back 14 years, to September of 2010 when Calgary’s Women released their sophomore album, Public Strain. Building on the momentum of their excellent self-titled debut, the quartet sharpened both their hooks and their experimentation, often blending the two to deliriously hypnotic effects. The record received accolades on both sides of the border, with Exclaim!’s own Stephen Carlick calling it “gorgeously weird, rhythmically complex pop music.”
But it would also prove to be the band’s swan song.
Women split up just over a month later, onstage at Lucky Bar in Victoria, BC, with brothers Patrick and his brother Matt Flegel throwing punches at one another. From the stage, Chris Reimer declared it their “last show as a band.”
That should have been it. Yet, Women’s legacy has loomed large across the ensuing decade. Public Strain landed on Exclaim!’s list of the 50 Best Canadian Albums of the 2010s, while Reimer, the Flegels, and Mike Wallace continue to produce astonishingly accomplished and diverse music via a variety of projects, not to mention racking up numerous production and performance credits with friends’ bands.
Cindy Lee
Now the most visible post-Women project, Cindy Lee finds Patrick Flegel taking the bones of Women’s music to their logical conclusion. He pushes the boundaries of queer identity and pop norms, making what he once described as “confrontational pop,” mixing guitars, noise, and ambient groove into some of the most disarming and pleasing music in the post-Women orbit. Until recently, the greatest embodiment of this aesthetic was What’s Tonight to Eternity. Like Sonic Youth before them, Flegel takes inspiration from the life of Karen Carpenter, and closes the record with a tribute to Reimer.
But then Diamond Jubilee came along.
Chad VanGaalen
The early line on Women was that they included members of fellow Calgarian Chad VanGaalen’s touring band. The relationship was further bolstered when VanGaalen produced both of their records and the band signed to Flemish Eye, VanGaalen’s longtime label home. But it was a two-way relationship. VanGaalen often accompanied Women onstage, and Matt Flegel continued touring with the creative polymath following Women’s split. Most notable was the musical kinship he shared with Chris Reimer which was equal parts inspiration and friendly competition. “He definitely pushed me as an artist,” VanGaalen told the National Post in 2012. “He was definitely hungry for the same things. But he managed to translate them a lot better than I ever could.”
Viet Cong/Preoccupations
Mike Wallace and Matt Flegel teamed up with Daniel Christiansen and Lab Coast’s Scott Munro, who had also played in Chad VanGaalen’s band, and re-emerged in 2012 with their new post-punk project, the unfortunately named Viet Cong. After public outcry, they changed their name to Preoccupations for a self-titled follow-up in 2016. Despite the controversy, the quartet are one of the best bands to emerge from Canada’s underground and until recently, the highest-profile example of Women’s legacy, pushing that band’s sound into ever-adventurous new territories.
Chris Reimer
Following Women’s onstage dissolution, Reimer joined San Francisco indie duo The Dodos as a touring member, played drums in Church of the Very Bright Lights with former bandmate Matt Flegel, and began recording solo material on the side. Sadly, the guitarist passed away in his sleep in 2012, at age 26, due to a possible heart condition. Most of his solo work still hasn’t seen the light of day. But 2012’s The Chad Tapes and 2018 double LP Hello People, both released posthumously, are beautiful collections of ambient recordings that represent just a handful of the unreleased music now under the supervision of the Chris Reimer Legacy Fund.
Recently, Flegel canceled the remaining dates of Cindy Lee’s current tour with Victoria’s also excellent Freak Heat Waves, citing “personal reasons.” That could be anything really. But if I were to conspiracy-theory the situation, I’d say the heat got too hot, so Flegel got out of the kitchen.
Diamond Jubilee is supposedly Cindy Lee’s final album, so this might be it for the project. But I’m skeptical that we’ve seen the last of Patrick Flegel as a musician.
Kool Kids Self-promotion Club
I waded into the deep end of Gen Z music fandom to check out PinkPantheress at the Danforth Music Hall back in April. PinkPanthress, who gives off an endearing, low-key star power, delivered a high-energy performance complete with a live drummer recreating all those UK garage beats in real-time. Highly recommend!
Also just for kicks, I caught the now Gerrard Love-less Teenage Fanclub at the Concert Hall. They didn’t play any of Love’s songs (a point driven home by my friend Godfrey pointing out all the classics Love wrote for the group) but they did play “Your Love Is the Place I Come From” so all is forgiven. Also: these guys are looking old (and so am I).
Kool Kids Recommendation Club
From SZA to Solange, Kelela to Kehlani, the past decade has seen a steady drip of great to excellent female singers pushing the boundaries of what R&B, and frankly, pop music in general, can be. Amber Mark doesn’t fit nicely into that alliterative lead , but she does *ahem* hit the mark otherwise (I’ll see myself out). “Comin’ Around Again” is the first we’ve heard from Mark since she dropped her debut album back in 2022. Always one to nod to the past while embracing the present, the song’s got a sticky, classic 90s R&B melody. But there’s a peculiarly modern streak to its slinky, sparse production that matches the will-we-won’t-we tug of war running through the mind of her protagonist as she considers an unexpected suitor.
The lane Kendrick Lamar opened with To Pimp a Butterfly was so wide that artists are still finding un- and under-explored spaces to work in. I don’t mean to say that Richmond, VA MC McKinley Dixon sounds like Kendrick in any direct way. No doubt his music was likely influenced by artists like Tyler, The Creator, Native Tongues, and his own experiences. But it’s hard to imagine the expansive jazz rap of Dixon’s excellent fourth album Beloved! Paradise! Jazz! existing, let alone finding an audience, without him. Anyway, “Run, Run, Run,” which sounds like a lost 70s blacksploitation theme song, juxtaposes Dixon’s life running through the streets as a kid with running through the streets as an adult. The difference? Real guns vs. the kind you make with your fingers.
Toronto’s Field Guide, aka former Middle Coast member Dylan McDonald, just dropped his third solo album, Rootin’ For Ya. Nominally a singer-songwriter (the genre, not the fact that McDonald is a singer who writes his own songs), there’s a thickness to the music that elevates it beyond the usual dude-with-guitar fare. Some of his sparser work reminds me of Hayden. “Somehow I Forgot” is a nervy ditty about taking the people around you for granted catching up to you. The taught verses make for the perfect launchpad for its explosive chorus, making it an easy highlight on a record full of them.
1999 Write the Future is a collective of musicians culled from 88Rising, a broader music collective focused on promoting Asian artists. Rich Brian, Warren Hue, and Zion.T appear to be the group’s key members, but their list of collaborators is both extensive and impressive: Ghostface, Souls of Mischief, Rick Ross, BadBadNotGood, Westside Gunn, Amaarae… it seems as if there is no corner of hip hop and R&B that the group won’t assimilate into their music, which is brilliantly showcased on their debut album, hella (˃╭̣ ╮˂̣)✧♡‧o· ̊. Like a more omnivorous version of the Internet or a less mysterious Sault, the record’s got plenty of highlights, but it’s the cumulative vibe of its 24 tracks that really sets the group apart.
Let’s get this out the way off the top: I love Charly Bliss. So I’ve already bought into the idea of a new CB record. Coming five years after Young Enough, Forever — out August 16 — continues to see the band increasingly embracing their love of pop music, as evidenced by first single “Nineteen,” and now the pulsing “Calling You Out.” The song dives deep into singer Eva Hendricks' insecurities and inabiltiy to stop herself from self-sabotaging relationships. Given last year’s loosie single “I Need a New Boyfriend” it would appear that the song is something of a self-fulling prophecy. Or maybe they’re just the extreme ends of Hendricks’ inner monologue? I don’t know, but it’s got a banging chorus! Also, shout out the Beastie Boys-inspired fisheye lens in the music video.
Ian Gormely is a freelance music journalist based in Toronto.
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