Cate Le Bon Cate Le Bon Cate Le Bon is an artist hailing from Carmarthenshire, rural West Wales. Be it on her more minimalist, acoustic-leaning 2009 debut album Me Oh My or critically acclaimed, liquid-riffed 2013 LP Mug Museum as well as 2016s Crab Day and the Mercury Award nominated Reward, Cate Le Bon’s solo work — and indeed also her production work, such as that carried out on the recent John Grant album, Boy From Michigan, or Deerhunter's Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (4AD, January 2019) — has always resisted pigeonholing, walking the tightrope between krautrock aloofness and heartbreaking tenderness; deadpan served with a twinkle in the eye, a flick of the fringe and a lick of the Telecaster. New album Pompeii bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. Sonically minimal in parts, its lyrics jog between self-reflection and direct address. Written primarily on bass and composed entirely alone in an “uninterrupted vacuum,” Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) and recorded the album largely by herself with long-term collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja in Cardiff, Wales. The songs of Pompeii feel suspended in time, both of the moment and instant but reactionary and Dada-esque in their insistence to be playful, satirical, and surreal. From the spirited, strutting bass fretwork of “Moderation”, to the sax-swagger of “Running Away”; a tale exquisite in nature but ultimately doomed (The fountain that empties the world / Too beautiful to hold), escapism lives as a foil to the outside world. Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal salience is here to stay. Cate Le Bon’s tracks Typical Love by Cate Le Bon published on 2022-08-24T00:26:22Z Harbour by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:20:21Z French Boys by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:19:38Z Wheel by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:18:30Z Cry Me Old Trouble by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:17:53Z Dirt on the Bed by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:17:29Z Pompeii by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:16:06Z Remembering Me by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:20:25Z Moderation by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:16:12Z Running Away by Cate Le Bon published on 2021-08-07T16:15:44Z