Review – Cate Le Bon: Mug Museum
posted in: Features
Throughout the blogosphere, critics and news writers most frequently slap one of two labels on Dutch musician Cate Le Bon: singer-songwriter or folk. And while it’s true that technically her often morbid but still delightfully twee musings on life and death could land her in one of those genres, neither characterization has ever felt quite right.
Yes, Le Bon is a singer who also writes songs, some of which do have elements of folk scattered here and there. But her albums are also infused with a surprisingly danceable hybrid of psych-rock, pop, and even fuzzed-out grunge that makes the music more fitting for the soundtrack to a Sundance-nominated indie flick than the back corner of some dusty pub.
On Mug Museum, her most recent effort, Le Bon’s creations are as varied and unpredictable as ever. With a lilting voice like a spider web “ somehow both delicate and strong “ she deftly traverses through a variety of musical styles and lyrical subjects, though generally the record’s content is still largely focused on the macabre. Take the chorus from Are You With Me, (watch the video after the jump) for example:
Well have I judged a book by how it’s bound
Am I lost or am I found
And are you with me
Are you with me now
Come back from the dead
You’ve been inside your head for too long
A preoccupation with death, while not a new element in Le Bon’s work, is both more prominent and more poignant this time around; much of the record was reportedly written following the death of her grandmother. Perhaps that’s why the album follows a sonic trajectory that reads like a person first ignoring, and then succumbing to, their depression.
Mug Museum kicks off with the up-tempo, gloriously catchy I Can’t Help You (which is still dark, lyrically), and remains largely upbeat and poppy for the next several songs. I Think I Knew, which finds Le Bon trading vocals with Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius, is a bright little gem filled with airy guitars and jangly cymbals, and the hypnotically nihilistic No God is accompanied by a twanging melody that belies its distressing message.
But all bets are off once the cacophonous Wild kicks in just after the record’s midway point. Although it’s far from being the best track on Mug Museum, Wild is perhaps the most unique and memorable. Punctuated by organ blasts and noisy percussion, the song is a chaotic affair that almost recalls Of Montreal‘s more dissonant work, and it introduces the album’s more scattered and dramatic segment. It’s not until the penultimate Cuckoo Through the Walls that things finally settle down.
Depressing as they may be, even the more tumultuous songs that make up this release are beautiful and somehow soothing. This is especially true of title track Mug Museum, which closes out the collection of songs and showcases the songstress’ mournful crooning over an equally melancholic piano melody. With Mug Museum, Le Bon has found a way to make even the most painful memories sound pretty.