The music of Cindy Lee is abrasive but beautiful. Comparisons to the output of Cindytalk seem appropriate in spots when discussing this material. However, the newest release, What's Tonight To Eternity, out on Superior Viaduct now, takes this artist's stuff in another direction. Fans of Julee Cruise, for example, will love this new record as much as I did.
"Plastic Raincoat" is girl group kicks filtered through a French ye-ye lens. This opener is sweet and ethereal, and at odds with the next cut due to the breakdown which occurs in the middle of "I Want You To Suffer". Here, Patrick Flegel makes sounds like we heard in the distance in Eraserhead (1977). "Speaking from Above" is gloriously chilling, the riffs and hooks Broadcast grasped at and made pretty, here made unsettling and lovely, while "The Limit" mines a similar vein of skewed indie. "Just for Loving You I Pay the Price" hits at those same pleasure-centers that This Mortal Coil's cover of Rema-Rema's "Fond Affections" hit at, even as the title cut seems a mix of early Stereolab and snatches of instrumentation and vocals from The Moon and the Melodies.
What's Tonight to Eternity is a record of odd beauty, and compelling tunefulness. The textures here should feel familiar to anyone who picked up a This Mortal Coil or Chris & Cosey record in the Eighties. Still, those points of comparison are imperfect at best given how otherworldly lots of this is. And while the eerily lovely bits here render this (perhaps) the best Cindy Lee record to date, "Lucifer Stand", a bit of business that suggests Goldfrapp scoring a Eurotrash thriller from the Reagan years, points the way to an entirely other kind of material for this act. A striking mix of tempos and washes of synths and effects, this cut stands apart from the rest of the excellent stuff here in a dramatic way. What's Tonight to Eternity is highly recommended, yes, but "Lucifer Stand" is the first one to download if you're not ready to commit to the full release yet.
What's Tonight to Eternity is out now via Superior Viaduct.
[Photo: Vanessa Tignanellia]