***ALBUM OF THE MONTH | February 2022***
Cate Le Bon
Pompeii
Mexican Summer
Listen Below
In this global pandemic, it’s safe to say that many of us have spent more time alone possibly than ever before, facilitating—for better or for worse—an exploration of the nooks and crannies, crevices and caves of our personalities, pasts, psyches and intellects.
Multi-instrumentalist Cate Le Bon’s sixth studio album Pompeii is a reflection of such an excavation. Composed alone in an “uninterrupted vacuum,” Le Bon also recorded the album largely by herself in Cardiff, Wales, with only long-time co-producer and collaborator Samur Khouja by her side. It’s an art-pop soundscape of isolation, and of identity—both individual and collective.
Right now, it’s hard to imagine feeling really scared about the pandemic, but there was a time when we all—or most of us—did. “One minute there’s hope, the next there’s existential dread,” Le Bon told Loud and Quiet, “and you can’t help but wonder if this is the last thing you’re ever going to make—and if it is, will anybody hear it, anyway? We might all be dead.”
Pompeii, as we know from lore and history books, was an ancient Roman city overtaken by molten lava spewed forth from Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, but preserved entirely as it was. Like lava, Le Bon took the enforced isolation of the pandemic as “permission to annihilate identity.” There’s much of this paradoxical duality to the album—excavation and annihilation; the urge to be alone and gasping for love; intellectual independence vs. hunger for conversation.
There’s a monkish discipline to the album, even where there’s anarchy and dissonance. One of Le Bon’s goals in the making of Pompeii was to imitate the “religious” sensibility in one of Tim Presley’s paintings, which hung on the wall of Le Bon’s studio and was reproduced as a portrait of Le Bon for the album’s cover—that stern-looking nun. The aesthetic is repeated in each of Pompeii’s three music videos, from Le Bon’s eccentric head coverings to her long, loose-fitting clothes to her mostly blank facial expressions.
In “Running Away,” we see the portrait of Le Bon as nun replicated on a vintage TV screen, and then she appears wearing a cape and a strange structural head covering, half-shrouding her face, as she dances in a small room in front a saxophonist and laser lights. Even though there’s another person in the room, they rarely interact, and Le Bon’s embrace of eccentricity and aloneness is palpable. Her poker face barely lets us in.
Yet Pompeii still gives an overall sense of deeply felt, passionate emotion. It’s there in the slow, pop-disco flirt of “Harbour,” where the vocals journey from a near-monotone up the scale to a heavenly soar in the tradition of Elizabeth Fraser; or in lyrics like “French boys / take time away”; or in the sexual shame, or shyness, evoked by a song title like “Dirt On The Bed.” And in the album’s title song “Pompeii,” there’s a scratching Captain Beefheart-like dissonance that scrapes gloriously against the prim prettiness of Le Bon’s layered vocal harmonies.
Le Bon comes across as an old soul, not just by virtue of her ability to sit with opposing sentiments and urges on Pompeii, but sonically as well. The overall influence is esoteric ’80s, with a Siouxsie Sioux/Kate Bush mashup in Le Bon’s idiosyncratic low-high-low vocal style, which is both alluring and wholly her own. And Shoegaze is an apt benchmark for some of the more ethereal-but-noisy guitar/synth interplay on the album.
Yet DEVO and Talking Heads also make an appearance in some of Pompeii’s head-over-heart irony of emotion, paired with interludes of synth-y beats. Even the visual aesthetics associated with the album reflect this ‘80s bent—from Le Bon’s heavy Siouxsie eye makeup, the bright pops of neon color, the use of saxophone, and the laser-y lights and vintage televisions in the video for “Running Away.” It’s an excavation not only of identity, but of our collective modern, as opposed to ancient, past.
This modern excavation is captured best in the “Moderation” video, where Le Bon balances in high heels on ancient-looking rocks in front of a gloomy gray sky, wearing a diaphanous black nun’s habit but also neon gloves and bright-red stockings. “Moderation / I can’t have it / I don’t want it / I want to touch it,” she sings. Later, she stands behind a classical headless statue, her eyelids slathered in bright blue eyeshadow and her lips painted crimson. “Picture the party where you’re standing on a modern age / I was in trouble with a habit of years / And I try / To relate.” There’s a smart, subtle humor to the lyrics, delivered in deadpan. I also went crazy trying to figure out what the melody and beat of “Moderation” reminded me of, when finally I figured out it was 10,000 Maniacs’ 1987 single “Like The Weather.”
“Remembering Me” is mostly a New Wave pop song, with those aforementioned DEVO and Talking Heads elements. The video is less moody and more lighthearted than those for “Moderation” or “Running Away,” with Le Bon wearing a series of colorful outfits in front of a white backdrop while singing, dancing, and lounging exaggeratedly on the floor and in a chair. It’s fun and fashion-y, a quirky, welcome break from contemplating modern existence, and yet we’re still thinking about what it means to be alone—whether there’s power in it, or only bravado. And how we might be remembered, if at all:
In the classical rewrite
I wore the heat like
A hundred birthday cakes
Under one sun
I didn’t need anyone
Notable Tracks: “French Boys” | “Moderation” | “Pompeii” | “Running Away”
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