Cindy Lee isn't a retro revivalist IMO, their previous band Women already had that technique of using 1940s-60s songwriting form and warping it with a noisy, no-wave, DIY sensibility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=673IaJZko9I
Part of that sound was Chad VanGaalen producing Women's two albums, and he went on to produce Alvvays' debut album in a similar DIY, tape-saturated style. Women's other successor act, Preoccupations, pretty clearly shows the post-punk/noise-rock side of Women, so it's kind of interesting to see how the descendants have grown their own roots a decade after the band ended.
Anyway my hot take is that Cindy Lee uses past conventions in an inside-out sort of way as a means to an end, rather than producing a retro-sounding surface as the end goal like Ariel Pink. It's not a style, it's an instrument.
Part of that sound was Chad VanGaalen producing Women's two albums, and he went on to produce Alvvays' debut album in a similar DIY, tape-saturated style. Women's other successor act, Preoccupations, pretty clearly shows the post-punk/noise-rock side of Women, so it's kind of interesting to see how the descendants have grown their own roots a decade after the band ended.
Anyway my hot take is that Cindy Lee uses past conventions in an inside-out sort of way as a means to an end, rather than producing a retro-sounding surface as the end goal like Ariel Pink. It's not a style, it's an instrument.