What's Tonight to Eternity? is the fifth studio album from Toronto-based music project Cindy Lee, headed by Patrick Flegel. Released in early 2020 through W.25th (a subsidiary of Superior Viaduct Records), the album was thematically influenced by the life of musician Karen Carpenter, which Flegel related to deeply on a personal level. The stylistically eclectic album was preceded by the release of 2 singles, and received highly positive reviews from critics who have described it as provocative, eerie and haunting. It was notably longlisted for the 2020 Polaris Music Prize.
Background
In an interview with The Fader, Flegel spoke of how the rigorous touring schedule of their former band Women took a toll on the interpersonal relationships within the group, culminating in an onstage brawl in October 2010 that subsequently led to the cancellation of the remainder of the tour & the band's dissolution. Admitting that they have a "pretty thin skin", Flegel said that their frame of mind during the emotionally-draining tour drew them to "deeply research" the life of their favorite singer Karen Carpenter - who would go on to become a "significant figure in the Cindy Lee mythos" due to her personal struggles with issues such as anorexia & exploitation by her associates. "On a micro scale," they said, "I had a similar situation that I could relate to where I had pretty severe mental health issues. I [also] empathized with her because she's this extreme suburban Shakespeare tale of living the dream and then having all of these peripheral people profiting off of their work." They further described the album as "A cautionary thing of like, be careful what you wish for."
Recording
What's Tonight to Eternity? was recorded at Flegel's own Realistik Studios in Montreal. Unlike previous Cindy Lee albums, it was recorded almost entirely by Flegel themselves in order to exert complete control over the process. To create the necessary atmosphere for the recording process, Flegel watched "a stream of movies during the recording and playback", especially those by Kenneth Anger. "When you're just sitting at a desk," they said, "it's cool to look at some magical, mystical, glorious footage. It's one of these things where [if] you're bummed out by what you're doing, aligning it with something that's a masterpiece tricks yourself into thinking it's good." Their younger brother Andrew is credited with playing drums on the album on its Bandcamp page.
Content
Style and themes
Daniel Sylvester of Exclaim! called What's Tonight to Eternity? a "diverse" & "genre-less" album that "runs the sonic gamut, leaving behind zero regard for a uniform sound, style or even structure." "While every Cindy Lee album wields an uneasy juxtaposition of melody and noise," writes Zach Schonfeld for Paste, "Flegel strikes a remarkably precarious balance between the two on What’s Tonight To Eternity." Similarly, according to Jack Denton of Pitchfork, the album "strikes a provocative balance of ’60s pop bliss and horror-show unease." Aquarium Drunkard wrote that the album belongs "on the shelf somewhere between contemporary sound-alchemists like Ariel Pink, John Maus and The Caretaker and timeless songwriters like Roy Orbison and Shadow Morton." According to Flegel, the album also thematically explores the "negative space" between "public and private, perception and reality, popularity and denunciation." "The characteristic intimacy of Karen Carpenter’s voice is absent here," writes Denton, "with Flegel’s earnest falsetto often rendered as a galactically distant echo. Instead, the singer’s presence is felt through other aesthetics often associated with her, like Richard Carpenter’s saccharine string arrangements and doo-wop-inspired backing vocals."