If there’s a pencil museum in Keswick and a fan museum in Greenwich, it’s believable that there would be a mug museum in Wales. And yet this imaginary place is just another strange pocket of the universe created by Welsh musician Cate Le Bon.
This protege of Super Furry Animals singer Gruff Rhys once obsessed over dead animals, but her third album comes in the wake of the death of her maternal grandmother. Building on from last year’s CYRK, she continues to up the tempo by a couple more notches and further defines her intoning vocal alongside some intimate, charming compositions.
Mug Museum is the first recording from Le Bon since her relocation from Cardiff to Los Angeles, and a crack of Californian sunshine is allowed to seep onto the moody Welsh moors. On endearing opener I Can’t Help You, off-the-cuff orders like “beat me like egg yolks” and “split me like timber” are set to upbeat Velvet Underground guitar jangles and looming horns; it’s one of several tracks that reveal that she’s at her best when her deep, doom-laden vocal is contrasted with spritely garage rock. A couple of late-album ballads get lost in the psych-sludge fog, though a melancholic duet with Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas is one of the album’s highlights. Like Hadreas, Le Bon is an oddball outsider in the music industry and her new album is unlikely to change this cult status. Mug Museum is a strange beast and all the better for it.
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
Best Track: I Think I Knew
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: The Velvet Underground THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, Tramp SHARON VAN ETTEN
In A Word: Understated
