True originals are hard to find. Cate Le Bon is one; her inscrutable quirkiness certainly seems more compulsion than affectation.
Her fourth album ‘Crab Day’ (released 15th March) is a bewildering bisque of tangential angles and playful surrealism. “If you don’t believe in stones, I’m gonna cry in your mouth,” she sings on ‘I Was Born On The Wrong Day’. What’s that all about, Cate?
It’s weirder and less coherent than 2014’s magnificent ‘Mug Museum’: fewer spaced-out Velvet Underground grooves, more Devo-like fidgeting around. But its restless, nervous energy should transmute into something special live.
She last played in Brighton at The Hope & Ruin with Drinks, her collaboration with White Fence’s Tim Presley. Before that she headlined Komedia. We missed them both. We’re not missing this. Patterns will be a good venue for her too.
We’ll be there, getting sucked down the rabbit hole.
Patterns, Friday 27th May 2016
