(Irony Bored/Shock)

Gruff Rhys’s right-hand-woman makes an album of her own

If Welsh singer Cate Le Bon is known for anything, it’s for her startlingly good guest spot on the Neon Neon track I Lust U, in which she duets with Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys. She had gained Rhys’s attention through a self-released single described by the man himself as “Bobbie Gentry and Nico fight over a Casio keyboard; melody wins!” It’s unsurprising, then, that her first English-language album would be the début release on Rhys’s Irony Bored label (a name with a long, but interesting genesis story – just Google it), and that it’s a cracker. In solo mode, Le Bon proves that she deserves the Nico comparison: like the Velvet Underground’s one-time chanteuse, she has several distinct registers, an indeterminate accent, and the ability to both soothe and scare the shit out of you. The fact that her abilities as a songwriter easily match her vocal ones renders Me Oh My so impressive: a track like Shoeing The Bones would be, in less capable hands, an agonising dirge, but Le Bon delivers lines such as “These are hard times to fall in love” and “Gripping the rope in days just gone / Shoeing the bones for everyone” with a disarming inquisitiveness. Previously only available as a limited-edition cassette (thus the album’s very distinct five-songs-per-side structure), it’s now available in the more consumer-friendly CD format, and I highly recommend that any Super Furry Animals, Velvet Underground, or Nico fans immediately investigate it.

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CHAD PARKHILL

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