Cate Le Bon - classic or dud

bulb after bulb's post appears copied from Apple Music

I thought so too, but then saw the ? after And the fruit of it all (which, I can't figure that part either!)

only apple subscribers may know! down with apple and their Big Lyrics monopoly!

yes, from Apple Music, question mark and all. no guarantee of results.

oh, nice, thanks! I will update the genius lyrics accordingly :-o

reminds me of the shins

"Moderation" is phenomenal and the other song's pretty swell too. I'm excited.

yeah, i am so ready to hear the whole damn thing. "Running Away" sounds even better following "Moderation", I think. i fucking love her instrumentation on the last few releases - the steady lineup of keyboards, bass, a small woodwind/horn section, minimal guitar (if any?)

I'm not cold by nature
This could bring me to my knees
The fountain that empties the world
Too beautiful to hold
Multidirectional love
With nowhere left to go
There no where to let go

"I'm not cold by nature" kills me, right through the heart

meanwhile, with "Moderation", i think may have actively pissed off one or more of my friends by talking too much about it, recently. I had "moderation" fever and i tried to spread it to others, but no one cared.

haven't read this yet, but looking forward to it:

https://pitchfork.com/features/profile/cate-le-bon-interview-pompeii/

!!

Twenty minutes down the road, in a loud, austere pizza restaurant, Le Bon seems to know everyone. The staff are elated to see her, she takes their hands in hers. Throughout the night, she strikes up conversations with most people there. To the locals, she’s known as a regular at the Joshua Tree Saloon, where karaoke nights are run twice weekly by actor Mario Lopez (aka Saved By the Bell’s A.C. Slater). “I still haven’t quite figured out what my karaoke song is,” she says. “I like to do crowd-pleasers that have really good intros, get everyone pumped, and then come in with these really low, droll vocals that can’t quite hit the spot.”

!

that would make traveling to the Pappy and Harriet's show she has coming up worth making.

i didn't know about her side project with her partner, DRINKS. giving that a listen today

it's ... not great.

they are both great, but not everything should be released.

imo.

The second DRINKS album is better than the first though neither hold a candle to her solo material

I'm now almost unreasonably keen to hear the other 6/9 of this long-player. Counting the hours, etc, etc...

Wow, Karl Malone's "Daylight Matters" story from October is... wowee zowee. Bless.

Seeing her in Woodstock, Sunday. Been too long, she's so amazing live.

The relative uniformity of tone is making Pompeii a little hard to crack after 2.5 listens. Though I'm pretty sure the opener, title track and "Cry Me Old Trouble", at least, will shortly unravel in a pleasing fashion, much as the singles did.

do you have the whole thing? i just now realized a third single is up now ("remembering me")

Full 9 tracks on Tidal and Spotify. (I may be benefiting from the GMT+10 "living slightly in the future" thing though.)

ah, ok! still not up for me, but I'm sure it will be soon.

"French Boys" and "Wheel" are working for me now. Not least in the bass department. Desperately need a lyric sheet though!

Belatedly realising that "Harbour" is pretty damn earworm'y. A bit of a "Home To You" in that it's the easiest to imagine hearing by chance in a shopping mall lol.

This is dripping in atmosphere. I love it.

Like her last album, this isn’t bad but I miss the more jagged guitars of her first few albums. I’m not as keen on the synths/sax combo. Just my personal taste but I rarely go for songs with saxophone

Polar opposite for me. This is the first time I'm buying what she's selling for more than a minute or two.

masterpiece imo

the new bryan ferry

And that's a fine place to aim for!

I keep hearing 10,000 Maniacs' "Like the Weather" somewhere in "Moderation"

10,000 Maniacs have a much better drummer

oh man, not comparing the drummers directly (i don't know 10K maniacs very well at all), but i love the drummer. i read somewhere about their drumming being driven by carefully placed bass drum kicks, recently, and that's what I focus on

i'm still digesting the album. i got so, so used to Moderation leading directly into Running Away - just a casualty of the several months of 1-3 songs approach to PR, but those two became intertwined, for me.

Yeah maybe not a fair comparison. That sort of late 80s light snappy rolling feel leads in the direction of Rusted Root

It feels to me like Pompeii's drums are dragging at the tempo, as if they're intentionally slowing everything down, a sluggish almost DJ Screw effect

the song "Pompeii" is hitting me, now, on the 3rd time through. now every corner of it feels so right, where it drifted right on past the first couple times. i do love the sound of her current line-up/instrumentation, so much.

The album is growing on me. I think I do like it more than the last album.

speaking of amazing guitar parts, both subtle and riffage, they're both in "Remembering Me"

the subtle can be heard during the chorus, the the thin wobbling snake between some of the lines and during some of the others:

Upset, and out of touch
Good grief, you miss so much
Oh, oh, remember me
Louder than empty rooms
Face down in heirlooms
Oh, oh, remembering me

that is positively slinking

later on, the riffage is later, at 3:00, the solo. it's like alt arena rock busts in all of a sudden but it's perfect

the thin wobbling snake

i want to go ahead and express my regret for this description of the guitar line, lol

the positively slinking thin wobbling snake

:-|

terrific bass on this record, reminds me of john giblin's playing on john martyn's grace & danger but less cagey.

Press material says she mostly composed it on bass

i JUST noticed the big obvious thing about the beginning of the title track "Pompeii", which is that it follows the exactly melodic scheme of the ending of the previous song, "French Boys"

also, i LOVE the chorus of "Pompeii", particularly the background vocal counterpart, the wordless "ooom-PAAAH!", and how it reinforces a kind of half-time feel

All my life in sentiment
All my language is vulgar and true
I've pushed love through the hourglass
Did you see me putting pain in a stone?

really really liking this album, possibly even more than the last ones. her herky-jerk rhythms are so mesmerizing and it seems like she's leveled up the arrangements. some great guitar tones on here too.

still looking for an earworm like "home to you," but maybe one will reveal itself in time.

the new molly nilsson album also has a song called "pompeii"

This record is wonderful. The bass, the arrangements, the rhythms - so much pleasure for the ears. I missed her in Glasgow last week because I got Covid, which is a shame because seeing her play the previous record live really opened it up to me. And I would have loved to see the parts of Pompeii come together before my eyes.

yeah it's so good. maybe my favorite of hers.

ditto

me too i think, that or cyrk anyway, and i think this one has the stronger songs.

Was playing it yesterday on a trip back from my folks and my sis, who is a fan to start with, was very taken by how much the guitars reminded her of Ween (who she is also a stone cold fan of).