The brilliant Welsh musician’s follow-up to 2019’s Reward is a low-key, slower paced affair, simmering with lockdown’s solitudinous lyrics, sparse keyboards, spongy bass, sax and little brass blasts, with echoes of Bowie and Talk Talk. There’s a feeling in the guitar sound also of 80s Japan, Talk Talk and Kate Bush, but Le Bon’s distinctive and original style remains, making this an album to soak in late at night.. Her lyrics are heartbreakingly emotional and also oddball, such as on standout track, Running Away, “The fountain that empties the world, Too beautiful to hold,” or title track, which of course touches on the idea of monumental disaster: “All my life in sentiment /All my language is vulgar and true/ I've pushed love through the hourglass/ Did you see me putting pain in a stone?” Moderation, Dirt On The Bed and Harbour are also among the standouts, but Remembering Me, perhaps the most upbeat in pace, is wonderfully splattered with bendy sounds and lyrics of some kind of dark, comical obituary. In the remake of my life / I moved in straight lines / My hair was beautiful /My eyes were slow /I had the heart of a thunderclap … In the classical rewrite / I wore the heat like /A hundred birthday cakes /Under one sun.” An album of dark oddness that really rewards multiple listens as it wanders the wonderful ruins. Out on Mexican Summer.
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