{"title":"Cate Le Bon","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-and-bradford-cox-myths-004-184923125917","title":"Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox - Myths 004","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs sure as if it had been mapped in the stars, or written in a prophecy buried deep beneath the sands of the Marfa desert, a collaboration between Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox was always something of an inevitability.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFourth in Mexican Summer’s Myths EP series (and following previous tie-ups between Dev Hynes and Connan Mockasin, Ariel Pink and Weyes Blood, and Dungen and Woods), Myths 004 sees Le Bon and Cox–each a much-revered musical innovator in their own right–finally united.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor both artists, Myths 004 signals a change of tack: meticulousness thrown to the wind as spontaneous, jammy tales of firemen and 5p plastic bags, unbrushed hair and shoelessness and makeup-daubed landscapes–all miraculously written and recorded in just one week–roll effortlessly off their cuffs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThough this EP materialises after two individual 2019 album campaigns–Le Bon’s Mercury-nominated fifth album Reward, and Cox’s eighth with his band Deerhunter, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (which Le Bon co-produced)–the chronologies are tangled: Myths 004 is in fact a snapshot of the pair’s very first meeting. After years of admiring each other’s work from afar, Cox and Le Bon finally converged on Marfa, Texas in 2018, at Mexican Summer’s annual Marfa Myths music, visual art, and film festival.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Marfa is an extraordinary town,” says Le Bon. “It feels like nothing else exists when you’re in it which is both comforting and unnerving.” In this otherworldly enclave, and with a band of frequent Cate Le Bon co-conspirators on hand to putty the gaps with drums, saxophone, percussion, keys, and additional guitar (Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint, Stephen Black of Sweet Baboo, Tim Presley of White Fence, and Samur Khouja), the EP was assembled whiplash-quick.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Writing and recording in a week is a tall order - especially when such chemistry exists between all the musicians involved, and the possibilities are boundless,” Le Bon explains. “We committed ourselves to embracing the chaos, surrendering to all moments and moods that travelled through. It’s a crude holiday scrapbook shared by all involved, an amalgamation of the changes in mood and light that shaped the days.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIndeed, Myths 004 is wondrous in its variety. On the opening song “Canto!”, Cox dons the ill-fitting leathers of an ageing biker and urges us to come ride with him, baby. He and Le Bon gaze into one another’s eyes with semi-serious sweetness as tough, wiry guitars stab through the romance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEverything shrinks and softens on the EP’s sole single, the gently melancholic “Secretary,” as Le Bon and Cox spout verse over a mysterious percussive rhythm; perhaps made by miniature cymbals from a mantric parade, perhaps by someone rummaging in the cutlery drawer. Together, they combat the office humdrum of filing, answering the phone, and eating “the same old plastic lunch” with a surreal and beautiful daydream of “mascara brushed across the plains \/ all of the phone calls you made disconnected.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMost freeform are the short instrumental interludes–the garage-y, hammily menacing “Companions in Misfortune,” could easily soundtrack a gang sauntering down an alleyway, whilst “Jericho” emulates a dog and a brass band falling down the stairs (with jazzy panache, thank you very much).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Fireman” sees Le Bon and Cox cast themselves as postulating heroes, as in a flash of tongue-in-cheek, lyrical-comic wordplay, Cate sings “I am a fireman \/ putting out fires, man” and Bradford, in a low faux-macho drawl, rambles immodestly in the background about his fire-extinguishing prowess.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd final track “What Is She Wearing,” drips with cynicism, wit, and parody punk spirit as Le Bon lists universally relatable and not-so-nice, day-to-day shit: having to take the bins out, stepping in chewing gum, taking your jumper off when you’re wearing an ugly t-shirt underneath, finding dirt on the fork at a fancy restaurant, going to the supermarket and paying five pence for a plastic bag you don’t want. It wouldn’t be hard to believe that John Cale is sawing his bow across an electric guitar somewhere in the background as Le Bon lippily gripes: “I’m walking to get myself a croissant from the bakery \/ and everybody is looking at me as if I have committed a crime.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut for all their twists and turns, Myths 004’s seven tracks sit perfectly alongside one another—each sounding simultaneously like a Bradford Cox song, and like a Cate Le Bon song. In the true spirit of collaboration, a feeling of sheer joy prevails, uniting the EP’s every shape, character, prang, plod and playful bite.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445402925,"sku":"184923125917","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-197972-111839.jpg?v=1700158034"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-pompeii-184923131529","title":"Cate Le Bon - Pompeii CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCD \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003ecomes in a 4-panel gatefold with foldout poster insert\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e, Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up to 2019’s Mercury-nominated\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eReward\u003c\/em\u003e, bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. Not to downplay her nod to disorientation induced by double catastrophe — global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas resonate all too eerily. “What would be your last gesture?” she asks. But just as Vesuvius remains active, Pompeii reaches past the current crises to tap into what Le Bon calls “an economy of time warp” where life roils, bubbles, wrinkles, melts, hardens, and reconfigures unpredictably, like lava—or sound, rather. Like she says in the opener, “Dirt on the Bed,”\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSound doesn’t go away \/ In habitual silence \/ It reinvents the surface \/ Of everything you touch.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis sonically minimal in parts, and its lyrics jog between self-reflection and direct address. Vulnerability, although “obscured,” challenges Le Bon’s tendencies towards irony. 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. Enforced time and space pushed boundaries, leading to an even more extreme version of Le Bon's studio process – as exits were sealed, she granted herself “permission to annihilate identity.” “Assumptions were destroyed, and nothing was rejected” as her punk assessments of existence emerged.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEnter Le Bon’s signature aesthetic paradox: songs built for Now miraculously germinate from her interests in antiquity, philosophy, architecture, and divinity’s modalities. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, and her narrativity favors slippage away from meaning. In “Remembering Me,” she sings:* In the classical rewrite \/ I wore the heat like \/ A hundred birthday cakes \/ Under one sun.* Reconstituted meltdowns, eloquently expressed. This mirrors what she says about the creative process: “as a changeable element, it’s sometimes the only point of control… a circuit breaker.” She’s for sure enlightened, or at least more highly evolved than the rest of us. Hear the last stanza on the album closer, “Wheel”:\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI do not think that you love yourself \/ I’d take you back to school \/ And teach you right \/ How to want a life \/ But, it takes more time than you’d tender.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eReprimanding herself or a loved one, no matter: it’s an end note about learning how to love, which takes a lifetime and is more urgent than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTo leverage visionary control, Le Bon invented twisted types of discipline into her absurdist decision making. Primary goals in this project were to mimic the “religious” sensibility in one of Tim Presley’s paintings, which hung on the studio wall as a meditative image and was reproduced as a portrait of Le Bon for Pompeii’s cover. Fist across the heart, stalwart and saintly: how to make “music that sounds like a painting?” Cate asked herself. Enter piles of Pompeii’s signature synths made on favourites such as the Yamaha DX7, amongst others; basslines inspired by 1980s Japanese city pop, designed to bring joyfulness and abandonment; vocal arrangements that add memorable depth to the melodic fabric of each song; long-term collaborator Stella Mozgawa’s “jazz-thinking” percussion patched in from quarantined Australia; and Khouja’s encouraging presence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe songs of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003efeel 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\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e(The fountain that empties the world \/ Too beautiful to hold)\u003c\/em\u003e, escapism lives as a foil to the outside world. Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal salience is here to stay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe past few years have seen Le Bon emerge as a much lauded and sought-after collaborator, producing albums for contemporaries such as Deerhunter (\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhy Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?\u003c\/em\u003e), John Grant (\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBoy From Michigan\u003c\/em\u003e), and forthcoming albums from both Devendra Banhart and H. Hawkline. She’s not so much a gun for hire as a multi-faceted artist and producer who can both steer the ship and tap into a collective mindset; in 2019, she joined John Cale for a three-night live stretch in Paris, and 2021 will see a bass appearance on the track \"If I Don't Hear from You Tonight\" from Courtney Barnett's\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThings Take Time, Take Time\u003c\/em\u003e. As Bradford Cox aptly notes about Le Bon, \"there are artists who look inwards or outwards, and then there are the very rare ones who transcend either location.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445599533,"sku":"184923131529","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-250514-158239.jpg?v=1700157504"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-pompeii-184923131512","title":"Cate Le Bon - Pompeii Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cp\u003eStandard \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eblack vinyl comes housed in a gatefold jacket with printed inners and download code\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e, Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up to 2019’s Mercury-nominated\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eReward\u003c\/em\u003e, bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. Not to downplay her nod to disorientation induced by double catastrophe — global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas resonate all too eerily. “What would be your last gesture?” she asks. But just as Vesuvius remains active, Pompeii reaches past the current crises to tap into what Le Bon calls “an economy of time warp” where life roils, bubbles, wrinkles, melts, hardens, and reconfigures unpredictably, like lava—or sound, rather. Like she says in the opener, “Dirt on the Bed,”\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSound doesn’t go away \/ In habitual silence \/ It reinvents the surface \/ Of everything you touch.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis sonically minimal in parts, and its lyrics jog between self-reflection and direct address. Vulnerability, although “obscured,” challenges Le Bon’s tendencies towards irony. 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. Enforced time and space pushed boundaries, leading to an even more extreme version of Le Bon's studio process – as exits were sealed, she granted herself “permission to annihilate identity.” “Assumptions were destroyed, and nothing was rejected” as her punk assessments of existence emerged.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEnter Le Bon’s signature aesthetic paradox: songs built for Now miraculously germinate from her interests in antiquity, philosophy, architecture, and divinity’s modalities. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, and her narrativity favors slippage away from meaning. In “Remembering Me,” she sings:* In the classical rewrite \/ I wore the heat like \/ A hundred birthday cakes \/ Under one sun.* Reconstituted meltdowns, eloquently expressed. This mirrors what she says about the creative process: “as a changeable element, it’s sometimes the only point of control… a circuit breaker.” She’s for sure enlightened, or at least more highly evolved than the rest of us. Hear the last stanza on the album closer, “Wheel”:\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eI do not think that you love yourself \/ I’d take you back to school \/ And teach you right \/ How to want a life \/ But, it takes more time than you’d tender.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eReprimanding herself or a loved one, no matter: it’s an end note about learning how to love, which takes a lifetime and is more urgent than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo leverage visionary control, Le Bon invented twisted types of discipline into her absurdist decision making. Primary goals in this project were to mimic the “religious” sensibility in one of Tim Presley’s paintings, which hung on the studio wall as a meditative image and was reproduced as a portrait of Le Bon for Pompeii’s cover. Fist across the heart, stalwart and saintly: how to make “music that sounds like a painting?” Cate asked herself. Enter piles of Pompeii’s signature synths made on favourites such as the Yamaha DX7, amongst others; basslines inspired by 1980s Japanese city pop, designed to bring joyfulness and abandonment; vocal arrangements that add memorable depth to the melodic fabric of each song; long-term collaborator Stella Mozgawa’s “jazz-thinking” percussion patched in from quarantined Australia; and Khouja’s encouraging presence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe songs of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePompeii\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003efeel 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\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e(The fountain that empties the world \/ Too beautiful to hold)\u003c\/em\u003e, escapism lives as a foil to the outside world. Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal salience is here to stay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe past few years have seen Le Bon emerge as a much lauded and sought-after collaborator, producing albums for contemporaries such as Deerhunter (\u003cem\u003eWhy Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?\u003c\/em\u003e), John Grant (\u003cem\u003eBoy From Michigan\u003c\/em\u003e), and forthcoming albums from both Devendra Banhart and H. Hawkline. She’s not so much a gun for hire as a multi-faceted artist and producer who can both steer the ship and tap into a collective mindset; in 2019, she joined John Cale for a three-night live stretch in Paris, and 2021 will see a bass appearance on the track \"If I Don't Hear from You Tonight\" from Courtney Barnett's\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThings Take Time, Take Time\u003c\/em\u003e. As Bradford Cox aptly notes about Le Bon, \"there are artists who look inwards or outwards, and then there are the very rare ones who transcend either location.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445697837,"sku":"184923131512","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-250514-158238.jpg?v=1700157528"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-reward-184923125016","title":"Cate Le Bon - Reward Standard Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned — for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis sense of privacy maintained throughout is helped by the various landscapes within which Reward took shape: Stinson Beach, LA, and Brooklyn via Cardiff and The Lakes. Recording at Panoramic House [Stinson Beach, CA], a residential studio on a mountain overlooking the ocean, afforded Le Bon the ability to preserve the remoteness she had captured during the writing of Reward in Staveley, Lake District.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOver this extended period a cast of trusted and loved musicians joined Le Bon, Khouja and fellow co-producer Josiah Steinbrick — Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) on drums and percussion; Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) on bass and saxophone and longtime collaborators Huw Evans (aka H.Hawkline) and Josh Klinghoffer on guitars — and were added to the album, “one by one, one on one”. The fact that these collaborators have appeared variously on Le Bon’s previous outputs no doubt goes some way to aid the preservation of a signature sound despite a relatively drastic change in approach.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBe 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, Cate Le Bon’s solo work — and indeed also her production work, such as that carried out on recent Deerhunter album 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe multifaceted nature of Le Bon’s art — its ability to take on multiple meanings and hold motivations which are not immediately obvious — is evident right down to the album’s very name. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word” says Le Bon, “and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver. I feel like it’s really indicative of the times we’re living in where words are used as slogans, and everything is slowly losing its meaning.” The record, then, signals a scrambling to hold onto meaning; it is a warning against lazy comparisons and face values. It is a sentiment nicely summed up by the furniture-making musician as she advises: “Always keep your hand behind the chisel.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445763373,"sku":"184923125016","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195329-169152.jpg?v=1700157623"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-reward-184923125023","title":"Cate Le Bon - Reward CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned — for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis sense of privacy maintained throughout is helped by the various landscapes within which Reward took shape: Stinson Beach, LA, and Brooklyn via Cardiff and The Lakes. Recording at Panoramic House [Stinson Beach, CA], a residential studio on a mountain overlooking the ocean, afforded Le Bon the ability to preserve the remoteness she had captured during the writing of Reward in Staveley, Lake District.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOver this extended period a cast of trusted and loved musicians joined Le Bon, Khouja and fellow co-producer Josiah Steinbrick — Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) on drums and percussion; Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) on bass and saxophone and longtime collaborators Huw Evans (aka H.Hawkline) and Josh Klinghoffer on guitars — and were added to the album, “one by one, one on one”. The fact that these collaborators have appeared variously on Le Bon’s previous outputs no doubt goes some way to aid the preservation of a signature sound despite a relatively drastic change in approach.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBe 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, Cate Le Bon’s solo work — and indeed also her production work, such as that carried out on recent Deerhunter album 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe multifaceted nature of Le Bon’s art — its ability to take on multiple meanings and hold motivations which are not immediately obvious — is evident right down to the album’s very name. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word” says Le Bon, “and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver. I feel like it’s really indicative of the times we’re living in where words are used as slogans, and everything is slowly losing its meaning.” The record, then, signals a scrambling to hold onto meaning; it is a warning against lazy comparisons and face values. It is a sentiment nicely summed up by the furniture-making musician as she advises: “Always keep your hand behind the chisel.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589445959981,"sku":"184923125023","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-195329-112022.jpg?v=1700157577"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-michelangelo-dying-pink-galaxy-lp","title":"Cate Le Bon - Michelangelo Dying - Pink Galaxy LP","description":"\u003cp\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e140g pink and white swirl vinyl with a printed inner sleeve.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIts creation led by pure emotion, Cate Le Bons seventh record Michelangelo Dying usurped the album she thought she was making. The product of all- consuming heartache, her feelings overrode her reluctance to write an album about love, and in the process became a kind of exorcism. What emerges is a wonderfully iridescent attempt to photograph a wound before it closes up but which in doing so, picks at it too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMusically, there is a continuation and expansion of a sound a machine with a heart that has taken shape over her last two records (2019s Reward and 2022s Pompeii) as Le Bon has increasingly taken control of the playing and producing herself. As guitars and saxophones are pushed through pedals and percussion and voices are fed through filters, an iridescent, green and silky sound emerges, with flashes of the artistic singularities of David Bowie, Nico, John McGeoch and Laurie Anderson surfacing and disappearing below the waterline throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat were left with is an ever-changing, continuous entity, a kind of song cycle. Each iteration reflects and progresses the last, each one a shard of the same broken mirror shifting, glinting, concealing and revealing, depending on how it is turned in the light. There are ultimately, Cate asserts, No revelations. No conclusions. There is no reason. There is repetition and chaos. I eventually allowed myself a vacant mind to experience it without resistance and without searching for a revelation or order to any of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn exercise in the viscerality of life, of love, of humanity for both listener and artist, Michelangelo Dying knows what it is to hold, to be held, and to be exquisitely, profoundly alone. \"The characters are interchangeable\" concludes Cate, \"but at the end of it all, its me meeting myself.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50790415040813,"sku":"184923135336","price":28.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/LP-GalaxyPink.png?v=1758812721"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-michelangelo-dying-cd","title":"Cate Le Bon - Michelangelo Dying - CD","description":"\u003cp\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e \u003cspan\u003e4 panel wallet with poster folder and an 8 page poster.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIts creation led by pure emotion, Cate Le Bons seventh record Michelangelo Dying usurped the album she thought she was making. The product of all- consuming heartache, her feelings overrode her reluctance to write an album about love, and in the process became a kind of exorcism. What emerges is a wonderfully iridescent attempt to photograph a wound before it closes up but which in doing so, picks at it too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMusically, there is a continuation and expansion of a sound a machine with a heart that has taken shape over her last two records (2019s Reward and 2022s Pompeii) as Le Bon has increasingly taken control of the playing and producing herself. As guitars and saxophones are pushed through pedals and percussion and voices are fed through filters, an iridescent, green and silky sound emerges, with flashes of the artistic singularities of David Bowie, Nico, John McGeoch and Laurie Anderson surfacing and disappearing below the waterline throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat were left with is an ever-changing, continuous entity, a kind of song cycle. Each iteration reflects and progresses the last, each one a shard of the same broken mirror shifting, glinting, concealing and revealing, depending on how it is turned in the light. There are ultimately, Cate asserts, No revelations. No conclusions. There is no reason. There is repetition and chaos. I eventually allowed myself a vacant mind to experience it without resistance and without searching for a revelation or order to any of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn exercise in the viscerality of life, of love, of humanity for both listener and artist, Michelangelo Dying knows what it is to hold, to be held, and to be exquisitely, profoundly alone. \"The characters are interchangeable\" concludes Cate, \"but at the end of it all, its me meeting myself.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50790421430573,"sku":"762184287522","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX353_CLB-MD_Mockups_CD-1.jpg?v=1748963654"},{"product_id":"cate-le-bon-michelangelo-dying-black-lp","title":"Cate Le Bon - Michelangelo Dying - Black LP","description":"\u003cp\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e140g black vinyl in a full color jacket and printed inner sleeve.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIts creation led by pure emotion, Cate Le Bons seventh record Michelangelo Dying usurped the album she thought she was making. The product of all- consuming heartache, her feelings overrode her reluctance to write an album about love, and in the process became a kind of exorcism. What emerges is a wonderfully iridescent attempt to photograph a wound before it closes up but which in doing so, picks at it too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMusically, there is a continuation and expansion of a sound a machine with a heart that has taken shape over her last two records (2019s Reward and 2022s Pompeii) as Le Bon has increasingly taken control of the playing and producing herself. As guitars and saxophones are pushed through pedals and percussion and voices are fed through filters, an iridescent, green and silky sound emerges, with flashes of the artistic singularities of David Bowie, Nico, John McGeoch and Laurie Anderson surfacing and disappearing below the waterline throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat were left with is an ever-changing, continuous entity, a kind of song cycle. Each iteration reflects and progresses the last, each one a shard of the same broken mirror shifting, glinting, concealing and revealing, depending on how it is turned in the light. There are ultimately, Cate asserts, No revelations. No conclusions. There is no reason. There is repetition and chaos. I eventually allowed myself a vacant mind to experience it without resistance and without searching for a revelation or order to any of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn exercise in the viscerality of life, of love, of humanity for both listener and artist, Michelangelo Dying knows what it is to hold, to be held, and to be exquisitely, profoundly alone. \"The characters are interchangeable\" concludes Cate, \"but at the end of it all, its me meeting myself.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50790425133357,"sku":"762184287621","price":27.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/LP-1_2.png?v=1748963769"}],"url":"https:\/\/mexicansummer.myshopify.com\/collections\/cate-le-bon.oembed","provider":"Mexican Summer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}