Album Review: Michelangelo Dying by Cate Le Bon

Heartbreak is rarely as raw or bittersweet as it is on this brave, cathartic and uplifting piece of work It takes a brave artist to chronicle the end of a long and meaningful relationship in which they were deeply involved, releasing their response for public consumption. The thought of doing such a thing did not appeal to Cate Le Bon as she started work on her seventh album, but as time wore on, she found her musical responses to the event were overwhelming and impossible to ignore. Michelangelo Dying, then, documents the heartache of losing a partner whose love and companionship was supposed to be lifelong.

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Le Bon is continuing a level-up that started with her first Mexican Summer release, Reward, back in 2019. Since then, she has established herself as a critical darling and in-demand producer for the best and brightest across an array of stylistic circles (Wilco, St. Vincent, Horsegirl, Dry Cleaning). Her own style has settled into a well-tailored version of '80s New Romanticism that few are able to pull off, or honestly would even attempt.

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"It's not comfortable, and it's not particularly beautiful," said Welsh art-pop veteran Cate Le Bon in 2019 about the chair she’d made by the release of her fifth record, ‘Reward’, after a year-long immersion in David Bowie and a course in furniture design. The same could be said about her music, which doesn’t lull you out of all your troubles or flourish like conventional pop bangers. Most of the time, it provokes deep reflections, sometimes very painful, and offers the sophisticated pleasure of contact with something bigger than just music.

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