Review
There’s a hush before the noise on Michelangelo Dying—a velvet nothing that slowly morphs into waves of synthetic sax, bruised vocals, and the sort of emotional architecture you can wander through like ruins at dusk. In her seventh solo album, Welsh art-pop maestro Cate Le Bon doesn’t just channel heartbreak—she reconstructs it, layer by layer, until it becomes a landscape you inhabit rather than a wound you run from.
The orchestrations are uncanny: “Love Unrehearsed” drapes itself in looping basslines and ambient sighs, while “Ride,” featuring John Cale, glides between fragile duet and existential incantation. Meanwhile, tracks like “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?” ride sleazy saxophone and slow-burning grooves that feel both vintage and freshly rewound. Le Bon’s lyricism is vivid and strange—>“I’ve made the panic of impermanence matter”—>and the production echoes that tension, turning art-rock oddity into felt catharsis.
Maybe it isn’t a banger in the conventional sense, and you may need to lean in, but when it presses its weight against you, it’s undeniable. Michelangelo Dying feels like standing at the edge of something beautiful and trembling. - Nora
