Cate Le Bon - Pompeii (Limited Edition on Translucent Sun Yellow Vinyl)

Cate retuns with another intricate, timeless and rewarding album. Pompeii Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up to 2019’s Mercury- nominated Reward, bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. 

Pompeii is 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.

Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal salience is here to stay.