Pompeii, Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up

to 2019’s Mercury-nominated Reward, bears a storied title summoning

apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,”

says Le Bon. Sonically minimal in parts, its lyrics jog between

self-reflection and direct address. Written primarily on bass and

composed entirely alone in an “uninterrupted vacuum,” Le Bon plays every

instrument (except drums and saxophones) and recorded the album largely

by herself with long-term collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja in

Cardiff, Wales

To leverage visionary control, Le Bon invented twisted types of

discipline into her absurdist decision making. Primary goals in this

project were to mimic the “religious” sensibility in one of Tim

Presley’s paintings, which hung on the studio wall in Cardiff, Wales as a

meditative image and was reproduced as a portrait of Le Bon for

Pompeii’s cover. Fist across the heart, stalwart and saintly: how to

make “music that sounds like a painting?” Cate asked herself. Enter

piles of Pompeii’s signature synths made on favourites such as the

Yamaha DX7, amongst others; basslines inspired by 1980s Japanese city

pop, designed to bring joyfulness and abandonment; vocal arrangements

that add memorable depth to the melodic fabric of each song; long-term

collaborator Stella Mozgawa’s “jazz-thinking” percussion patched in from

quarantined Australia; and Khouja’s encouraging presence.

The songs of Pompeii feel suspended in time, both of the moment and

instant but reactionary and Dada-esque in their insistence to be

playful, satirical, and surreal. From the spirited, strutting bass

fretwork of “Moderation”, to the sax-swagger of “Running Away”; a tale

exquisite in nature but ultimately doomed (The fountain that empties the

world / Too beautiful to hold), escapism lives as a foil to the outside

world. Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal

salience is here to stay.