Emotional Rescue
On her seventh album, Welsh art-rocker Cate Le Bon has returned to her homeland after a period of living in California. On the emotional Michelangelo Dying, she comes to terms with a broken heart and even teams up with fellow countryman John Cale. The singer-songwriter tells Prog about what she refers to as her “necessary exorcism” and why she’s looking forward to playing her new songs live.
Words: Julian Marszalek
Images: H Hawkline
“You can’t suppress emotion. It’s no good for your health. You have to sit with it. Look it in the eye. That’s the only way to move through it.”
Soft and womb-like, but resolved: Cate Le Bon faces up to grief on
MicChelangelo Dying
.
C ate Le Bon’s return to Cardiff after nearly a decade living in California felt less like a culture shock and more like an overdue homecoming.
“It’s been really lovely,” she says warmly from her home in Wales. “I was back and forth anyway, but living in the States made me feel more Welsh than I’d ever felt before. People couldn’t understand what I was saying because the corners of my accent never got knocked off.”
It’s difficult to shake the feeling that her return home gave Le Bon the grounding needed to face the heartache she’d been running from since the break up of her long-term romantic relationship with American musician Tim Presley, with whom she’d recorded two albums as DRINKS.