The seventh studio outing from Cate Le Bon arrives not as a calculated career move but as a necessary surrender to the gravity of the heart. ‘Michelangelo Dying’ is a work of startling emotional transparency, a record that reportedly displaced its own intended predecessor to map the messy, iridescent geography of a fresh wound. It functions as a sonic exorcism where Le Bon abandons the architectural precision of her previous era for something more fluid and dangerously visceral. The result is a song cycle that feels like a living organism, a machine with a heart that pulses with the erratic rhythm of human grief and recovery.
The sonic architecture of the record is characteristically dense yet curiously weightless, built on a foundation of filtered voices and guitars that shimmer like oil on water. This iridescent sound marks a significant technical evolution from the static, synthetic dread of her 2022 release, ‘Pompeii’ (Mexican Summer). While that predecessor felt more akin to concrete pillars and sharp angles, ‘Michelangelo Dying’ is permeated by a terrifying, organic unpredictability. By pushing her saxophones and guitars through intense chains of vintage filters and pedals, Le Bon achieves a smearing effect where instruments bleed into one another, mimicking the nebulous sting of an emotional wound.
On the opening movement “Jerome,” Le Bon navigates a landscape of shifting synthetic textures and jagged percussion, setting a tone that is both alien and deeply intimate. This atmosphere deepens with “Love Unrehearsed,” a track that captures the awkward reality of affection stripped of its performance. Throughout the record, the collaborative spirits of Stella Mozgawa and Euan Hinshelwood provide a rhythmic and melodic scaffolding that allows Le Bon to push her experiments into increasingly surreal territory. Unlike her earlier work where percussion felt like a metronome for the apocalypse, the contributions here are reactive and twitchy, following the pure emotion of the writing process.
The middle section of the album pivots on the existential unease of “Mothers of Riches” and the hauntingly cyclical “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?” where the passage of time is felt as both a burden and a release. Le Bon’s production choices emphasize a green and silky aesthetic, reminiscent of late-era Bowie or the cold-wave elegance of Nico, yet the emotional core remains singular. “Pieces of My Heart” and “About Time” act as internal dialogues, shards of a broken mirror reflecting a protagonist who is learning to exist without the comfort of easy conclusions or structural order.
As the record nears its conclusion, the sense of isolation becomes a source of power. “Heaven Is No Feeling” and “Body as a River” evoke a state of physical and spiritual dissolution, suggesting that the only way to heal is to flow through the pain rather than around it. The appearance of John Cale on “Ride” adds a layer of avant-garde authority, his voice acting as a weathered anchor against the swirling, kaleidoscopic arrangements. By the time the final notes of “I Know What’s Nice” fade away, the listener is left with a profound sense of having met the artist in a state of total, unadorned truth. ‘Michelangelo Dying’ is not an album of answers, but a magnificent, chaotic photograph of a human being meeting themselves in the dark.
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