Pompeii

Le Bon’s genius, at a time saturated with nostalgia and gated reverb, is to borrow more from mood than technique. Pompeii moves towards Talk Talk, Kate Bush, and Richard Butler in how it emotes, but also achieves their same level of timelessness.

Compared with Reward, these songs fill up greater volumes, but they still in many ways feel like companion pieces, united by a reverential dedication to the oblique as the direct, the spasm as control, the heart as the mind.

As with all of Le Bon's projects, the claustrophobic, wonderfully awkward whole is very much her own. [Mar 2022, p.31]

Le Bon’s creative power remains in the circuitous jaggedness with which she navigates pop and poetry, uncertainty and revelation.

On Pompeii, Le Bon is direct and poignant, honing in on a polished sound while using classical, tragic influences to help her make sense of the urgent, unfurling present.

Pompeii truly feels like a gesamtkunst rather than a collection of separate songs. The album reaffirms what makes Le Bon’s music such a useful prism to process thoughts and feelings that feel too immense to articulate within traditional means.

A surrealist song cycle that is both oblique and engaging.

Le Bon is one of indie music's more beguilingly brilliant artists, as her sixth LP attests. [Feb 2022, p.72]

It conjures up a wistfulness for times you don't even necessarily want to revisit. Beneath all the complex layering of instruments, the whirlwind of sounds and styles, it’s these simple and powerful feelings that cut through.

It makes for a quiet reinvention in the face of adversity, with Le Bon as stylistically light on her feet as ever.

The dense and shrouded nature of this album means you sometimes have to wait for the clouds to clear before certain lines resonate or choruses grab you, but once they do, they don't let go.

Pompeii shows Le Bon happily wandering into the obscure corners of what pop music can become, establishing a well-earned spot as one of today’s most captivating visionaries.

Encasing the malaise and drudgery of the last two years and preserving them in dark grey ash, ‘Pompeii’ captures a distinct sense of isolation without explicitly spelling it out. There’s much to excavate here.

The corners of these songs might not snag quite as dangerously as before, but there's no blunting of the fascination Le Bon's songwriting so expertly exerts. [Mar 2022, p.80]

Bolstered with warm tones of sax and synth, bearing colourful thumbprints of the past, Pompeii is certainly a success of Le Bon’s continual daring.

Le Bon’s finest moments bypass rational analysis in favour of radiant gestures. We should welcome them during these colder days.

With its melodic focus on the bass and heady lyrical vision expressed through quirky pop-tinged aesthetics, the album is full of moments that feel effortless while being thoughtful.

With its multi-layered arrangements and art-rock leanings, it’s miles away from the freaky folk of Me Oh My or Cyrk. But there were times I felt adrift in abstraction and wished for a simple rhyming couplet to ground me. I can hardly fault any artist for wanting to remake and challenge themselves, however, and Cate Le Bon does that successfully with Pompeii.