Cate Le Bon : Michelangelo Dying
The cover art of Cate Le Bon‘s 2022 album Pompeii depicted the Welsh singer/songwriter in a wimple, a color-washed photo based on a painting of her as a nun, painted by her then-partner during the 2020 Covid lockdown. Though its immediate meaning is as opaque as Le Bon’s characteristic musical surrealism, it stood as a symbolic gesture of affection, a brief flash of intimacy from an artist known for playfully bending perceptions of reality than providing a direct reflection of it.
On Michelangelo Dying, her follow-up to that stunning 2022 LP, Le Bon brings us in at the epilogue of that relationship, offering her own take on a breakup album. But as ever with Le Bon, it’s never quite so pat, never that obvious. “It’s not really about him,” she told The Guardian about Michelangelo Dying earlier this year, but rather about mourning an idealized depiction of it, “realising you’ve completely abandoned yourself in the throes of this all-encompassing love.” The sense of loss is always present, always part of the scenery, even as Le Bon’s hindsight is refracted through an obscured lens.
Her depictions of intimacy between two partners is impressionistic yet immaculately sculpted on “Love Unrehearsed,” where she sings in its opening line, “she’s a real contender for a marble face,” only to ask later, “Does she sleep like a stone/Because you touch her more?” The lush “Pieces of My Heart,” a powerful ballad worthy of a blockbuster ‘80s film, finds her grieving the “pieces of my heart erased/And nothing’s gonna change.” When she narrows her focus on “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?”, she captures an even more quietly heartbreaking moment that speaks to the supporting players left behind from a relationship in ruins, musing, “I thought about your mother/I hope she knew/I loved her.” But it’s the time lost and the psychological and physical toll it takes that Le Bon grieves on “Body As a River”: “In the prime of my life/I’ve left everywhere twice…I’m sick all the time.”
However wounded or disillusioned the songs on Michelangelo Dying are at their core, they’re never anything less than gorgeous—reflective of the kind of unique vision that’s led artists such as Wilco and Horsegirl to enlist her to produce their own records. Opener “Jerome” comes alive with a hypnotic wash of shimmering guitars, immersing listeners into a blissful if heartbroken dream world. “Mothers of Riches” opens with a rich strata of staccato piano, fluid basslines and ethereal layers of sax, its layers of sound subtly overlapping so gradually that you don’t realize how immersive the effect is until you’re entirely submerged. And the crystalline guitar lines in “About Time” evoke Cocteau Twins at their most accessible. They’re all reminders that, despite a very real grief over the loss of a beautiful fantasy, Cate Le Bon is uniquely suited to draw up the blueprints for a strange and wonderful path forward.
Label: Mexican Summer
Year: 2025
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Cate Le Bon : Michelangelo Dying
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