Michelangelo Dying

Heartbreak is rarely as raw or bittersweet as it is on Michelangelo Dying. It is a brave piece of work, Cate Le Bon surrendering to her feelings in a costly emotional investment but delivering a piece of work whose release must be immensely cathartic. Such inner strength proves ultimately uplifting.

[On "Pieces Of My Heart"] she sings, “I pledged my love to America/Then I run so far.” Talk about a lyric for our time. It’s just one of many moments where this alluringly opaque record becomes yearningly universal.

Cate Le Bon redirects her pain towards acceptance and understanding with this beautiful, pensive, and often humorous collection of songs.

It might sound heavy, but there’s a cheeky quality to Le Bon’s abstractions that transform her untraditional lyrics into something more accessible.

Le Bon fills her music with ornately carved oddities, but she’s always had an ear for pop melodies, even within her most ambitiously arranged songs.

As Cate Le Bon weaves her way through difficult emotional states on Michelangelo Dying, it may seem like the road was a challenging one to navigate, but it has resulted in some of her best and most rewarding work.

Le Bon’s production approach has shifted her musical universe far from the brittle, guitar-driven sounds of earlier, post-punk indebted records like Crab Day (2016) towards a distinctive sound that seems to reach backwards and forwards simultaneously. This feeling of being held in suspension characterizes many of Michelangelo Dying’s most affecting moments.

It continues the deepening specificity of Le Bon’s creative personality, with these songs representing the next notch of all of her various and unlikely components gelling into something that’s simply hers alone.

The album unfolds at its own unhurried pace. Initially, it can feel almost vaporous, but its textural richness rewards patience; with each listen, new layers emerge, like light shifting through water at different times of day.

In constructing such an ornate snarl of emotion and eloquence, Le Bon has effectively created in Michelangelo Dying a bummer album that doesn't actually require any wallowing to digest.

In some ways, this record feels like an impressive painting that charms you from the very first glance – without a cause, connecting with your mind on a subconscious level.

Michelangelo Dying, her seventh, is her most refined accomplishment yet. [Oct 2025, p.130]