After a decade of living in the California desert and dealing with the fallout of a long-term relationship, Cate Le Bon moved back to her native Wales, surrounded herself with family and friends, and began working on her new record. Its overall theme changed over time and ultimately evolved into an album about love and its aftermath.
Michelangelo Dying was not intended as a breakup album – Le Bon initially had something else in mind entirely – but the pull of the more personal subject matter was something she couldn’t resist. Within her unique production signature, Le Bon embraces synthesized arrangements and the languid, sophisticated sheen of late-period Roxy Music. “Gently read my name / Cry and find me here,” she sings in the lush, woozy opener, “Jerome”. “I’m eating rocks and so it goes.” In “Love Unrehearsed”, a simple, insistent beat frames the synth-heavy New Romantic groove. The sound is pure and timeless, with Le Bon’s graceful voice capturing her emotional surrender.
Le Bon wears her influences on her sleeve and isn’t particularly cagey about it. There’s no denying David Bowie‘s theatrical elegance on the swelling ballad “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)”, yet it still sounds utterly like something only Le Bon could come up with. The soulful despair in her voice often blurs the lines between Annie Lennox, Kate Bush, and Alison Moyet.
From a production standpoint, Le Bon – known for producing the likes of Wilco, St. Vincent, and Kurt Vile – embraces everything from loping synthpop on “About Time” to ethereal soundscapes on “Ride” to traces of exotic, percussion-heavy Tropicalia on “Pieces of My Heart”. Hovering over everything, however, is a sort of existential dread. Michelangelo Dying was co-produced by Le Bon’s longtime collaborator, Samur Khouja.
“There’s this idea that you could do everything yourself,” Le Bon explains in the press notes, “But the value of having someone you completely trust, as I do Samur, be your co-pilot allows you to get completely lost knowing you’ll get pulled back in at the right moment. We have come to quietly move as one in the studio.”
As Cate Le Bon weaves her way through difficult emotional states on Michelangelo Dying, it may seem like the road was a challenging one to navigate, but it has resulted in some of her best and most rewarding work. In the album closer, “I Know What’s Nice”, Le Bon embraces acceptance and independence: “I’m on the wrong side of paradise / But I know what’s nice.”