The most harrowing part of a breakup isn’t the moment it happens — it’s the disorienting calm that comes after. Left alone, orbiting oneself. Michelangelo Dying, Cate Le Bon’s seventh studio album, is suspended in this space: “No revelations. No conclusions. There is no reason. There is repetition and chaos.” Across these songs, the Welsh musician wades through the dissolution of a relationship using full psychedelic beams of sound not to make sense of the wreckage, but make room for it.
For nearly two decades, Le Bon has forged her own path of malleable art rock. “Absurd,” “abstract,” and “surreal” are adjectives that routinely pop up when explaining her shapeshifting sound and expressionist lyrics. “Every fear that I have/ I send it to Pompeii,” she sings, alongside distorted amusement park synths and clunky piano chords, on the title track from 2022’s Pompeii. “Got an ugly wait for morning papers/ Sipping wine through a telescope.” Her lyrics are always evocative although opaque in meaning, her arrangements amorphous yet striking.
The follow-up to Pompeii was scheduled to come out last year, but life had other plans. Initial attempts at an album didn’t reflect Le Bon’s reality. Instead, they seem like they might have been a rebellion against it. “It was discombobulating,” she revealed, explaining her futile attempt to avoid love songs. “I kept thinking I would come back to myself by making a record, but I was trying to make a record that had nothing to do with it.”
Her idiosyncratic style is wholly her own, though it sometimes obscures the person behind the work. Michelangelo Dying, although still filled with dense, reticular song structures that feel like archeological dig discoveries, also proves to be Le Bon’s most transparent work to date. She surrenders to romantic upheaval, leading to greater acceptance of somatic intuition (“Body As A River”) and emotional stillness (“Ride”).
“This is how we fall apart,” Le Bon sings on “Pieces Of My Heart.” Her voice is soft but clear. “I’d sing love’s story,” she laments, “But nothing’s gonna save it.” She stands at the shoreline, letting each incoming tide of refracted light synths and buoyant drum hits wash away the sting of loss. From a distance, we watch as fragments of her disappear: “Pieces of my heart erased/ And nothing’s gonna change.”
That Salvador Dalí melting new wave sound that was happening on Pompeii is still there thanks to Euan Hinshelwood’s incredible sobbing saxophones, Paul Jones’ lush piano, Dylan Hadley’s silvery drumming, and Valentina Magaletti’s curious percussion. But Le Bon’s vocals gracefully wilt alongside her aqueous background. Even though she knows there are no answers to pursue, her vocal runs are fueled by longing. “Dig deep are you dumb or devout/ I try to figure it out,” she sings on the Bowie-esque “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?” Intense whipping sounds in the background sound like a shadow of the initial cut. Distant harsh background noises remind us we’re getting farther away from the source.
Listening to Michelangelo Dying is like watching a wound gradually closing up. Le Bon is examining the process with a patient eye. As she warned, there’s no bold revelation; there’s no dramatic climax. Remarkably, Le Bon makes the slow-paced restoration feel leisurely without sugar-coating the difficulty of it all.
Rather than the volatile stab following a fresh heartbreak, the pain Michelangelo Dying withstands is more existential. It’s the kind of pain that gets all dolled up after acceptance starts to settle; it flirts with our rationality, using romanticization to keep us from moving on. And even if we don’t fall for the mental delusion, our bodies will remind us to slow down. Loss affects our whole system whether we face it or not. “I made the panic of impermanence matter,” goes a poignant line on “Body As A River,” a song that nods at physically succumbing to grief.
Le Bon’s layered, repetitive sounds mimic grief that grounds us in new stages of life after loss. Letting go doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or that it wasn’t real. “It’s alright, it’s alright,” she slowly sings on the pleasantly droning “Ride,” which features Welsh legend John Cale. “It’s just feelings going away.” Cale acts as a companion, reminding her life lingers on after one love fades into the distance. It’s all part of the ride.
Michelangelo Dying is out 9/26 via Mexican Summer.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Geese’s Getting Killed
• Jeff Tweedy’s triple album Twilight Override
• Neko Case’s Neon Grey Midnight Green
• Doja Cat’s Vie
• Robert Plant’s Saving Grace
• Sprints’ All That Is Over
• Mariah Carey’s Here For It All
• JJ & The A’s’ Rhetoric Of Trash
• Purity Ring’s Purity Ring
• Amanda Shires’ Nobody’s Girl
• Sam Prekop’s Open Close
• Crushed’s No Scope
• Automatic’s Is It Now?
• John Maus’ Later Than You Think
• glaive’s Y’ALL
• Emily Yacina’s Veilfall
• White Reaper’s Only Slightly Empty
• Bitchin Bajas’ Inland See
• Tom Skinner’s Kaleidoscopic Visions
• Jeezy’s Still Snowin’
• Fred Armisen’s 100 Sound Effects
• Daffo’s Where The Earth Bends
• Sloan’s Based On The Best Seller
• The Starting Line’s Eternal Youth
• Rosa Anschütz’s Sabbatical
• Falle Nioke’s Love From The Sea
• Adam Wright’s Nature Of Necessity
• Coach Party’s Caramel
• Yttling Jazz’s Illegal Hit
• Grandbrothers’ Elsewhere
• SWOLL’s Avoid Attach
• Night Tapes’ portals // polarities
• Joy Crookes’ Juniper
• Poptones’ Pure
• Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving
• SONS’ Hallo
• Patrick Watson’s Uh Oh
• Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun
• Wic Whitney’s Foolhardy
• Revocation’s New Gods, New Masters
• Studio Electrophonique’s Studio Electrophonique
• Lady Wray’s Cover Girl
• Carolina Mama’s AMINA
• Sydney Sprague’s Peak Experience
• anaiis’ Devotion & The Black Divine
• Christone “Kingfish” Ingram’s Hard Road
• Scorpions’ From The First Sting
• Smokey Brights’ Dashboard Heat
• Dave Hause’s …And The Mermaid
• Grumpy’s Piebald EP
• Sir Richard Bishop’s Hillbilly Ragas
• Hei’An’s Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye
• Cochemea’s Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros
• Good Neighbours’ Blue Sky Mentality
• Marcus King Band’s Darling Blue
• Kanadia’s The Fire That’s Tearing Through Our Home
• DarWin’s Distorted Mirror
• Chris Tomlin’s The King Is Still The King
• Rochelle Jordan’s Through The Wall
• Molly Grace’s Blush
• DAIISTAR’s Fuzz Club Session
• Nobukazu Takemura’s knot of meanings
• Number_i’s No.II
• Abraham’s idsungwüssä
• Mason Lindahl’s Joshua/Same Day Walking
• Shiner’s BELIEVEYOUME
• Meklit’s A Piece Of Infinity
• Geckøs’ Geckøs
• Peezy’s STILL GHETTO
• Alex Hitchcock’s Letters From Afar
• Early Fern’s Wetland Interiors
• Immersion’s WTF??
• Vijunns’ Collapse
• Rainbow Kitten Surprise’s Bones
• Dying Wish’s Flesh Stays Together
• Meghan Dowlen’s Dizzy Spell
• Aren’t We Amphibians’ Parade! Parade!
• The Cords’ The Cords
• Sol ChYld’s REBIRTH. Theory
• Cameron Whitcomb’s The Hard Way
• Rainsford’s Before Blue
• Hunny’s SPIRIT!
• Remi Goode’s Things I’ve Said Before
• Gideon Broshy’s Nest
• Ferguson’s NEVER IN MY LIFE
• Mulatu Astatke’s Mulatu Plays Mulatu
• The Zac Schulze Gang’s Straight to It
• Animal, Surrender!’s A Boot For Every Band
• Daniel G. Harmann’s Versailles
• Rage’s A New World Rising
• PLATO III’s Grown
• Ev. G’s And Then I Go Up
• AMERETAT’s AMERETAT
• Traidora’s Una Mujer Trans Sin País
• Parent Teacher’s Doombloomer
• Perrie’s Perrie
• Slugfeast’s Slugfeast
• Paul Dally’s RAVE
• Cole Davis’ Consider It!
• Lucky Horse Red’s Lucky Horse Red
• Eleri Ward’s Internal Rituals
• Kathryn Williams’ Mystery Park
• Jaywalk And The Cadillacs’ Whitewalls & Harmonies
• Corey Feldman’s Evolutions 22 For 4
• Colbie Caillat’s This Time Around
• Lucky Horse Red’s Lucky Horse Red
• From Fall To Spring’s Entry Wounds
• Paper Route Woo’s Slime Dunkin’ Mixtape
• Jake Banfield’s Opens Bars
• Hardy’s COUNTRY! COUNTRY!
• Daniel G. Harmann’s Versailles
• The Mack’s’ Bonanza
• Sir Winston’s Protect The Future
• Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm (20th anniversary Edition)
• Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)
• Humble Pie’s Town And Country 60th Anniversary Expanded Edition
• Sigur Rós’ Takk… (20th Anniversary Remaster – B-sides & Extras)
• Kali Uchis’ Sincerely: P.S.
• Thomas Rhett’s About A Woman (Deluxe)
• George Winston’s Autumn 45th Anniversary Edition
• Acres’ The Host Deluxe Edition
• Lady A’s On This Winter’s Night (Volume 2)
• Rauw Alejandro’s Cosa Nuestra: Capítulo 0
• Bright Eyes’ Kids Table EP
• Woesum’s Protected v2 EP
• University’s YES EP
• Adore’s BITER EP
• Helen Ganya’s Share Your Care Remix EP
• Masma Dream World’s A GRAVE IN A LUCKY SITE EP
• Wells Ferrari’s Wasted Time EP
• Jay Worthy’s Once Upon A Time Chapter 1
• Jinzo’s Here’s The Meat EP
• Elisapie’s Inuktitut (Remix) EP
• Thomas Dollbaum’s Drive All Night EP
• Peeling Flesh’s PF Radio 2 EP
• President’s King Of Terrors EP
