"Pompeii": Cate Le Bon's new release

John Grant and Deerhunter producer goes with her own distinctive flow on sixth LP.
You might expect a record born in solitude to represent a newly intense distillation of its creator's sound. Pompeii, Cate Le Bon's follow-up to 2019's Reward, initially suggests the opposite is true: isolation leads to a damping of overt quirks and flourishes and a greyscale wash of synths and introspection. 

Yet while the bright volatile reds and oranges of Le Bon's earlier records (not to mention Drinks, her hair- trigger collaboration with Tim Presley) have cooled to something darker, she still presses a wild array of musical patterns and textures into Pompeii's surfaces. 

Imaginary Euro-pop hit French Boys, the title track's delicate John Cale- at-the-circus whirl, Dirt On The Bed's experimental-theatre sax: the corners of these songs might not snag quite as dangerously as before, but there's no blunting of the fascination Le Bon's song-writing so expertly exerts.