{"id":462422,"date":"2025-09-30T06:45:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T06:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/462422\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T06:45:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T06:45:16","slug":"cate-le-bon-michelangelo-dying-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/462422\/","title":{"rendered":"Cate Le Bon: Michelangelo Dying Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past 15 years, Cate Le Bon<\/a> has been constructing her own warped world of sound. In Le Bon Land, guitars bend and liquify like Dali clocks, synthesizers echo into an infinite horizon, and familiar words stretch and contract within her steely register. Across her previous six albums, Le Bon\u2019s music has expanded from winsome freak folk to lush and towering art pop that lays bare her love of Bowie<\/a> and John Cale<\/a>. Le Bon\u2019s imaginative approach to contemporary rock music and the outr\u00e9 edges of pop has made her a sought-after producer (by St. Vincent<\/a>, Wilco<\/a>, Dry Cleaning<\/a>) and ranked her among the most singular and instantly recognizable artists working today.<\/p>\n

On previous records, Le Bon delighted in abstraction, writing askew verses about isolation and the relationship between art and artist. But on her seventh album, Michelangelo Dying<\/a>, Le Bon plunges headfirst into craggier depths: pervasive heartache. After spending nearly a decade in Joshua Tree, California, Le Bon endured the messy collapse of a long-term relationship, and relocated to her native Cardiff, Wales, where lifelong friends and family live nearby. In the wake of her breakup, Le Bon was shoving away any instinct to write about it\u2014in fact, she had an entirely different album in the works. But it was too potent an experience to ignore, and her body revolted until she acknowledged it; back pain and full-body hives persisted as she traveled non-stop to produce for other artists. \u201cThe breakup was always like an amputation that you don\u2019t really want, but you know will save you,\u201d Le Bon told The Guardian<\/a>\u2019s Laura Snapes earlier this year. Letting herself sing about it was just as critical; \u201cthere\u2019s a softness that comes from the surrender,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Heartbreak is perhaps the most trodden artistic topic of all-time, but Le Bon\u2019s portrayal glimmers in its own mythic light. On the softly pulsing \u201cLove Unrehearsed,\u201d Le Bon muses about a woman fit \u201cfor a marble face.\u201d \u201cDoes she sleep like a stone\/\u2019Cause you touch her more?\u201d Le Bon inquires, her serene timbre making the question sound all the more accusatory. The song, which contains the album\u2019s title phrase, doesn\u2019t build to a crescendo but undulates like a steady tide. That circular pattern, never breaking, seems to be the point: \u201cStay forever\/But you are so cruel\/I get swept away\/In your love,\u201d Le Bon murmurs.<\/p>\n

Michelangelo Dying is teeming with instrumental loops like this: Le Bon\u2019s boinging bassline on \u201cI Know What\u2019s Nice,\u201d Valentina Magaletti\u2019s roomy percussion on \u201cPieces of My Heart,\u201d Paul Jones\u2019 staccato piano on \u201cBody As a River.\u201d These elements ground Le Bon\u2019s songs, and keep you sheltered in the eye as gusts of saxophone and electric guitar storm around you. Le Bon seems to extract power from repetition, as if she\u2019s reciting a mantra\u2014or conducting an exorcism. \u201cRide,\u201d Le Bon\u2019s duet with longtime hero John Cale, is a shade darker than most of the album, the sludgiest entry on Michelangelo Dying. Its titular refrain is weighty, as are the watery synths spilling out and nudging the song forward\u2014as if she wants us to feel time passing, life passing. Every second, if possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past 15 years, Cate Le Bon has been constructing her own warped world of sound. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[31104,77,269,16,15,4715],"class_list":{"0":"post-462422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115291902644614071","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}