Cate Le Bon – Michelangelo Dying Review

Heartbreak is an inevitability of music. It has fashioned some of the most popular songs in modern history. But it also offers an artist more than just chart fame. Some are keen to exorcise their personal demons, their broken moments, through their art as a means of achieving peace. It is a sincere process and, in the right hands, a rewarding one for listener and artist. Such is the case for Michelangelo Dying, the latest album from Cate Le Bon. Her desire here is not to show all the grisly details which informed these feelings but to showcase the chaos, the madness, which comes through loss. Doing so without delivering on the gossip-like details is one of the many purposes Le Bon can be proud of with this latest release. Michelangelo Dying is as sincere as it is smart with its lack of specifics allowing the listener to interpret these intimate moments with enough experience of their own to heal something in themselves.  

Such is the reason we return to love songs time and again. Those moments which truly connect with a listener, and there are a handful from this year which managed this, are in short supply. For every chart topper channelling their love for intimacy with as limited a view on the world as possible, there are three more creatives hammering away with passion, trying to make sense of little moments. Those sentimental features are a key theme for Michelangelo Dying. Opening track Jerome is a tender, spiralling effort from Le Bon where the instrumental cacophony, the standout guitar work, is just as crucial to the emotive feeling as the intermittent, delicate vocal work on display. It’s as strong an opening song as you could want from Le Bon, who carries this care and quality throughout the album. Subtle moments of brilliance are what bring Michelangelo Dying together.  

A little pause between “con” and “tender” on Love Unrehearsed is the magnificent detail which separates Le Bon from the rest of the loved-up pack. Crucial to the success of Michelangelo Dying is the success of a song like Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday). A song which captures the richness of an overplayed genre, and condenses it into the special moments. We must grieve the first Christmas, the first birthday, when a loved one is lost, and that is exactly what Le Bon does here. Not specifically, but with enough suggestiveness to make an audience think about what they’re grieving, what they had. These are songs not just about grieving a loss but embracing the change. That latter is so crucial, and so frequently missing from albums relaying the shock of major changes. About Time offers some small relief to those changes, a chance to start fresh.  

Startlingly open, but in that shifting way which makes a song stand strong against the tests of time. Michelangelo Dying is as open as you want it to be. It’s all about your read on the moment, on the life Le Bon shares with her listeners on this release. Much of it is as open as you would want for someone who is spending their life in the spotlight. But Le Bon knows as much as her returning listeners that the detail comes in the lack of it. That loss is a listener’s gain, their imagination free to run wild with a series of different reads on essential work. Michelangelo Dying is an excellent expression of what we do in the face of loss. What love we slip into, the hate that sometimes crops up. It’s all there and forms a vital listen.