The Welsh singer Cate Le Bon has earned a lot of well-deserved critical praise the last few years. And she's produced the sort of varied body of work, both solo and as parts of other projects, that most new(er) indie artists would kill for. And to add to that, she's now set to offer up perhaps her best, most consistent record yet. Reward, out on Friday via Mexican Summer, is just a fantastic album.
From the Broadcast-like opener "Miami", and on to the subtle Sixties-vibes of "Daylight Matters", Cate sounds entirely in command of the material here, with an eye on accessibility where she may have, in the past, had more of an eye on breaking new ground. And while some of this ("Mother's Mother's Magazines") is risky in the way that her work with Tim Presley was, Le Bon's more interested here in producing direct, and directly affecting, music. For the discerning listener, "Home to You" and "The Light" recall, for instance, the work of past pioneers like Anne Clark and even Kate Bush. Still, those cuts, and especially the percolating "Magnificent Gestures", are really neat blends of earlier New Wave forms with an entirely new kind of austere-yet-warm indie-pop. If Le Bon imbues this with more heart than some of that stuff she did with White Fence's Presley, it's largely down to her confidence as a performer, her skills as a songwriter, and her ease at modulating her fantastic voice in the service of material that straddles a few genres effortlessly.
Reward was co-produced by Samur Khouja and it features musicians Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint) on drums, and Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) on bass and saxophone, and Huw Evans (H.Hawkline) and Josh Klinghoffer on guitars. And while those musicians deserve some credit for the textures and moods here on this album, Cate Le Bon should be praised for finally making the sort of near-masterpiece fans had always wanted from her. Reward is space rock made with a very earthy, folk-rock-sensibility behind it. Had Sandy Denny ever hooked up with mid-period Roxy Music, this is the sort of product that would have resulted from such an odd pairing. And to grasp at comparisons like that is to admit how utterly one-of-a-kind Cate Le Bon remains as a singer and performer, her music unlike anything else these days.
Reward is out on Friday via Mexican Summer.
More details on Cate Le Bon via her official website, or her official Facebook page.
[Photo: Ivana Klickovic]