Cate Le Bon Confronts Heartbreak Head-On in ‘Michelangelo Dying’

The album Cate Le Bon planned to make last year never saw the light of day. What emerged instead was something rawer, more honest—a record she tried desperately not to write.

Michelangelo Dying, the Welsh musician’s seventh studio album, arrived September 26 through Mexican Summer as an unplanned meditation on love and loss. The thing is, Le Bon had zero interest in making another breakup album. She fought against it, attempted to steer her creative process anywhere else. But grief has its own timeline, and eventually, she surrendered to what needed to come out.

“I kept thinking I would come back to myself by making a record,” she explained about her initial attempts to create something—anything—that wasn’t about the dissolution of her relationship. Those early songs felt disconnected from reality. They weren’t working because they weren’t true.

For nearly two decades, Le Bon has carved out her corner of the art rock world with music that defies easy categorization. Critics reach for words like “surreal” and “abstract” when describing her work, and there’s good reason for that. Take a line from 2022’s Pompeii: “Sipping wine through a telescope” while “ugly wait for morning papers” unfolds. Her lyrics paint impressions rather than tell stories, her arrangements shift like dreams you can’t quite remember upon waking.

But here’s what’s different about Michelangelo Dying: beneath the experimental soundscapes and cryptic poetry, there’s an emotional directness that cuts through. “This is how we fall apart,” she sings on “Pieces Of My Heart,” her voice unadorned and clear. “I’d sing love’s story, but nothing’s gonna save it.”

The diverse palette continues where Pompeii left off—think David Bowie filtered through a prism, with touches of Nico’s darkness and Laurie Anderson’s adventurous spirit. Euan Hinshelwood’s saxophone doesn’t just play notes; it weeps them. Paul Jones’s piano work feels lush yet unstable, while Dylan Hadley’s drums and Valentina Magaletti’s percussion create rhythms that feel both grounding and disorienting.

Le Bon feeds guitars and voices through pedals and filters until they emerge transformed—silky, iridescent, constantly shifting. Each track reflects and refracts the others, creating what feels less like a collection of songs and more like a continuous emotional state captured from different angles.

“Body As A River” acknowledges the physical weight of grief with the line “I made the panic of impermanence matter.” It’s the kind of observation that only comes after you’ve stopped fighting the feeling and started examining it instead. The body remembers what the mind tries to forget.

What’s striking about the album is its refusal to provide the catharsis we’ve come to expect from breakup records. There’s no moment of triumph, no “I Will Survive” anthem waiting at the end. “No revelations. No conclusions. There is no reason. There is repetition and chaos,” Le Bon states matter-of-factly. She’s not trying to make sense of heartbreak—she’s documenting its texture.

Welsh legend John Cale appears on “Ride,” a droning meditation where Le Bon repeats “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s just feelings going away.” Cale’s presence feels like an elder statesman reminding her that this too shall pass, that life continues beyond this particular pain.

The production choices mirror the emotional content brilliantly. On “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?” harsh whipping sounds lurk in the background like ghosts of the initial wound, while the foreground melody moves forward tentatively. “Dig deep are you dumb or devout / I try to figure it out,” she wonders, the question hanging unanswered.

Throughout the album, Le Bon examines her wound with the patience of someone who knows healing can’t be rushed. She’s watching it close gradually, noting each stage of the process without judgment. The repetitive, layered arrangements mirror how grief works—cycling through the same territories, each pass slightly different than the last.

By the album’s end, you realize the characters Le Bon sings about—the lover, the leaver, the left behind—are all facets of herself. “At the end of it all, it’s me meeting myself,” she concludes. After the relationship ends, after the other person exits the frame, what remains is the self, alone but somehow more complete for having experienced the loss.

Michelangelo Dying stands as Le Bon’s most vulnerable work, though vulnerability here doesn’t mean confession. It means allowing the mess to exist without cleaning it up for the listener’s comfort.

Follow Cate Le Bon on Instagram and stream Michelangelo Dying on Spotify.