As an entrance it is unquestionably powerful and dramatic. A lone female voice recites the words to Ivor Cutler’s ‘Women of the World (Take Over)’ as Cate Le Bon and the five members of her band take to the stage. Le Bon bears a striking resemblance to that of Renée Jeanne Falconetti when she played the lead role in the 1928 silent-movie masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Both women have an equally compelling and fiercely individual presence.
Tonight is the third date on a tour that will see Cate Le Bon perform in the UK, Europe, and then in the New Year across the Atlantic to North America. The tour is in support of the Welsh multi-disciplinary artist’s seventh studio album Michelangelo Dying, which was released last month.
Le Bon begins her set, perhaps symbolically, with the opening track on Michelangelo Dying. Much has been written about the heartbreak that informed the creation of the new record, following the end of a long relationship. But as ‘Jerome’ and the other nine songs she will play from Michelangelo Dying tonight affirm, they are the sound of resilience and personal evolution.
The liberating power of the music is no more evident than on ‘Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?’ where the restorative lightness of touch enables the song to just float away in a sonic bubble. Yet for all that Le Bon and her band – featuring both Euan Hinshelwood and Paul Jones, mainstays of the recording sessions for Michelangelo Dying – are tight and controlled in their delivery they are not beyond taking themselves too seriously. ‘Mothers of Riches’ stops abruptly. “We fucked up so bad,” says Le Bon. She then asks the crowd to momentarily turn round the other way so they can start the song again.
Older songs are expertly woven into the fabric of the newer material as the set gathers momentum. On ‘Mother’s Mother’s Magazines’ – from Le Bon’s 2019 album, Reward – Hinshelwood and Jones face-off in a saxophone duel, moving the song into the higher reaches of avant-pop. It is exhilarating stuff.
At the song’s conclusion, Cate Le Bon tells us “there’s no other place I’d rather be tonight,” a sentiment with which, you imagine, everyone in the capacity crowd will wholeheartedly agree. The decision by the venue to remove the customary seating from downstairs and create a standing area only certainly adds to the energy and integration of the occasion.
The shimmering, contagious pop of ‘Home to You’ – again taken from Reward and somehow fusing the ghosts of Let’s Dance-era David Bowie and early Siouxsie and the Banshees – elevates the evening onto an even higher plane.
Like Joan of Arc, Cate Le Bon is an indomitable spirit. And like a chameleon, Le Bon is shedding her skin, abandoning her past, and moving on in life.
With thanks to Rowland Thomas for some inspiration.
Photos: Simon Godley
More photos from Cate Le Bon at Howard Assembly Room in Leeds
