Mug Museum
Welsh singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon enlists the services of Devendra Banhart/Joanna Newsom producer Noah Georgeson to help find the right balance between minimalism and a musical breakdown. The best tracks on her third album, *Mug Museum*, are held together by a thumping electric bass guitar, a near-barren drum set, and her voice in one speaker; guitars or keyboards move in from the other. It creates the feel of a pop and folk singer from another era—likely the early ‘70s, when the U.K., especially, seemed to find these outliers on a regular basis (to potentially rule out their position as outliers). Though the album was recorded in her new home of Los Angeles, there’s nothing in these spooky songs (“No God,” “I Think I Knew”) to suggest she’s done anything differently. A full band comes a-crankin’ for “I Can’t Help You,” “Wild,\" and “Sisters,” and whatever lessons they learned from The Velvet Underground are put to good use.
Welsh singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon’s understated and modest third album, Mug Museum, is in part a lament to the erosion of memories, all told with remarkable detail.
The Carmarthenshire-raised psych-folk chanteuse moves to LA for her third album, finding both a newly melancholic voice and a sunnier disposition in her sound.
2012’s Cyrk saw enigmatic Welsh pop purveyor Cate Le Bon channeling the ghosts of Nico, Syd Barrett, and Sandy Denny, offering up an austere set of angular psych-folk confections that sounded like they arrived via a Harvest Records time capsule.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Wales a sunny place, hearing Cate Le Bon’s third jaunty, psychedelic record Mug Museum. Wales isn't, of course, but its musical output’s pretty sun-soaked (look at pals Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci or Super Furry Animals); this LP’s no exception. Much like the Welsh themselves, though, there’s a charming stoicism here, a maturity beneath the folk-pop, and a darker turn since 2012’s CYRK.
Welsh songwriter Cate Le Bon returns, less than two years removed from her triumphant Cyrk. There's a dreamy, gauzy feel in many of the record's 10 tracks; Le Bon's recent relocation to sunny California—Mug Museum was recorded in Los Angeles—could hav
Album review: Cate Le Bon, 'Mug Museum'. "This is strange, boutique folk-pop with a vitalised imagination – a rewarding listen, and then some..."
When Cate Le Bon announced earlier this year that she was packing up her red dragon bindle and forsaking the magical valleys of Ye Olde
Review Of Cate le Bon's "Mug Museum". The album comes out 11/12 on Turnstile/ Wichita Recordings. The first single from "Mug Museum" is Are you with Me now.