Why Cate Le Bon’s new album should be your most anticipated of 2025
As much as I’d like to think I do, the truth is, I don’t share anything in common with St Vincent. She is a mercurial and stylish artist, while I am merely an admirer with no discernible talent to my name. But then, out of nowhere, I heard her say, “Cate Le Bon is one of my favourite artists ever”. There it was, the essence of our commonality. I’ll take that.
But why is she one of my favourites? Well, maybe I need St Vincent once again to crystallise my answer. “There’s music that you love and then there’s music that you love and that you also listen to all the time. And I listen to Cate all the time”.
She’s a welcome antidote in the age of self-importance. Rarely will her voice ever be heard outside the realms of her own music, not through self-aggrandising promotion or culturally provocative hot takes, but because she’s almost a servant to her own music. And that’s time well spent, for every single release is so brimming with nuance, innovation and character that it makes her truly hard to pin down.
Le Bon is the sort of artist who doesn’t need to play whatever modernised games are required of musicians. Her voice is barely heard in between album cycles, and so, when we are finally treated to the first morsel of new music, we listen with heightened intent. And so we should, as consistently, there is so much to process on whatever release we are treated to.
Here, right now in 2025, we are experiencing it again, with her seventh studio album, Michelangelo Dying, is set for release on September 26th. The two lead singles, ‘Heaven Is No Feeling’ and ‘Is It Worth It? (Happy Birthday)’ have confirmed what I already expected to be true, that this could well be my favourite album of the year.
Both feel revitalisingly fresh yet quintessentially Le Bon in equal measures as she patrols up and down synthesised chords, taking her time to deliver vocal melodies that rain over the top like glittery dust. She has an uncanny ability to soften the edges of angular music and give humanity to the otherwise esoteric, all while drawing upon saturated narrative tropes in a new way.
A point John Cale, who appears on the upcoming track ‘Ride’, made best, saying, “She’s got this vocal phrasing that’s awkward in the best way,” adding, “The voice is beautiful, but her delivery is what opens her up to everything.”
When you listen to the truly stunning 2019 album, Reward, it feels like somewhat of a prequel to this upcoming music, both sonically and lyrically. The compositional lightness has descended from its altitude, engaging with thicker, sludgier air so that her lyrics about a relationship’s end can move with heaviness.
But why am I so excited for this record? Well the answer exists somewhere on the border of her music and cultural importance. Undoubtedly, Le Bon is an artist operating in her own lane, and with little in the current framework to compare her with, which in itself is an exciting musical prospect.
However, it’s more what she represents. This isn’t the first time I’ve raised concerns with the rapid move towards music digitalisation and social media marketing, and it certainly won’t be the last. But it feels like the slippery slope continues to ramp up its gradient. Music is increasingly being boiled down to bite-sized moments, 30-second segments designed to simply soundtrack a baseless and aesthetically driven social video that offers no real artistic merit.
Those in tighter circles will always respect the art form of an album, yet it feels like the very boundary of that circle is shrinking. While we watch the walls close in around us, Le Bon elevates herself above the nonsense and operates on her own frequency. Her creativity isn’t informed by anything other than her own sense of self, and, in that, her music acts as tonic to modern woes.
Le Bon might not change the world, nor might she halt this slow societal decline, but it will continue to fire another arrow in the air as authenticity fights back against a growing sense of artifice.
