Cate Le Bon Michelangelo Dying

Critic's Take

The review highlights Michelangelo Dying as an album rooted in heartbreak, noting lyrical references to being ground down by relationship fallout. It singles out 'Pieces of My Heart' for its direct lyric quoted in the text and discusses recurring themes of loss and erasure. The reviewer frames the album's strength in its lyrical candor and emotional focus.

Key Points

• Pieces of My Heart is highlighted as the album’s emotional focal point because its quoted lyric encapsulates the record’s heartbreak theme.
• The album’s core strength is its lyrical focus on loss and relationship fallout, providing emotional candor throughout.

Themes

Critic's Take

The review singles out Heaven Is No Feeling as the clearest display of Le Bon’s songwriting mastery, praising its vivid breakup imagery, vocal shape-shifting, and melancholy sax as a definitive highlight. Mothers of Riches is explicitly called one of the album’s best, celebrated for billowing hooks and neon-buzzing guitar. Love Unrehearsed carries the album’s title phrase and embodies the record’s hypnotic, tide-like repetition and quietly accusatory lyricism. Ride, a duet with John Cale, is darker and sludgier but still compelling, its weighty refrain and watery synths making time feel palpable. Elsewhere, loops and tactile instrumentation—boinging bass on I Know What’s Nice, staccato piano on Body as a River, and roomy percussion on Pieces of My Heart—underscore the album’s mantra-like power.

Key Points

• Heaven Is No Feeling is the clearest showcase of Le Bon’s songwriting mastery, blending vivid breakup detail, vocal contrast, and mournful sax into a striking highlight.
• The album’s core strengths are ornate, loop-driven arrangements and billowing melodies that turn heartbreak and surrender into a hypnotic, art-pop exorcism.

Themes

Critic's Take

The review text provided contains no substantive discussion of individual songs on Michelangelo Dying, so no specific tracks are highlighted or critiqued. Because the piece is a navigation/header fragment rather than a full review body, there is insufficient evidence to identify best songs or provide rationale. The normalized numeric score (80) is used, but song-level analysis cannot be supported from the given text.

Key Points

• No song can be identified as the best because the review text lacks track-specific commentary.
• The album has a normalized score of 80, but the review fragment contains no thematic or track-level analysis.

Critic's Take

The review highlights several standout songs—"Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?" is called the album's emotional summit, while "Love Unrehearsed", "Mothers of Riches" and "Heaven Is No Feeling" are praised for their alien danceability and textured production. "Body as a River" is noted for its busy, excitable arrangement that juxtaposes celebratory sounds with alienated perspectives. "Ride" gains distinction through John Cale's guest vocals, linking Le Bon's work to his legacy. Overall the best songs are those that pair hazed-over production with transfixing, melancholic grooves that embody the album's isolated mood.

Key Points

• "Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?" is the album's emotional centerpiece because it's presented as a mournful, ruminative summit.
• The album's strengths are its hazed-over production, alien danceability, and a persistent sense of isolated, transfixing atmosphere.

Themes

Critic's Take

Cate Le Bon’s Michelangelo Dying feels increasingly warped yet quietly consistent, and the best songs show that tension. The record’s standout opener, “Jerome”, immediately signals the disorienting soundworld that makes the best tracks on Michelangelo Dying so arresting. Songs like “Mothers of Riches” and “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?” turn Le Bon’s surrealism toward blunt lyricism, making them among the album’s most affecting moments. Finally, “Ride” ties the record together with John Cale’s feature, bringing warmth and familiarity to the album’s emotional confusion.

Key Points

• “Jerome” is best because its opener status, guitar chorus and candid lyrics immediately define the album’s disorienting pull.
• The album’s core strengths are its lyrical directness about grief and the textured, effects-laden instrumentation that reflects emotional confusion.

Themes

Critic's Take

Cate Le Bon's Michelangelo Dying is her most beguiling and deeply felt record, and the best songs - like “Jerome”, “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)” and “Body as a River” - show why. The reviewer leans on warm, stentorian vocals and minimal, richly textured arrangements, noting how those tracks turn dreamy lyrics into immediate feeling. “Jerome” opens with a quavering voice that makes the record intimate, while “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)” and “Body as a River” exemplify its hymnlike and forlorn danceability. The result is an album that pairs invention with personal urgency, yielding several standout songs that feel both opaque and yearningly universal.

Key Points

• The best song is compelling for its intimate vocals and direct, evocative lyricism that open the album with immediate emotional pull.
• The album's core strengths are its melodic invention, minimal yet richly textured arrangements, and poignant lyrics about love, longing, and cultural perspective.

Themes

Critic's Take

Cate Le Bon’s Michelangelo Dying is a sweetly meditative, sonorous record that finds its best tracks in the subtle pleasures of “Jerome” and “Pieces Of My Heart”. Wilkinson lingers on the opener “Jerome” as an entry into a reverberant, Cocteau Twins-like studio-verse, and praises “Pieces Of My Heart” for its direct emotional line - these are the best songs on Michelangelo Dying because they balance melody with Le Bon’s cool, sombre voice. He also singles out “About Time” and “Heaven Is No Feeling” as noteworthy, describing tropical chimes and new-romantic touches that deepen the album’s charms. The review reads as admiration tempered by analytic distance, presenting the best tracks on Michelangelo Dying as quietly commanding rather than bombastically grand.

Key Points

• The best song is "Jerome" because it establishes the album’s reverberant, Cocteau Twins-like sonic world and anchors the mood.
• The album’s core strength is its sonorous, meditative production and Le Bon’s cool, sombre vocal character that renders emotional wounds beautifully.

Themes

Critic's Take

Stereogum praises Michelangelo Dying as Cate Le Bon’s most transparent work, focusing on how individual songs inhabit the disorienting calm after a breakup. Pieces of My Heart stands out for its soft, clear vocal and waves of refracted synths and buoyant drums that gently wash away grief. Ride, featuring John Cale, becomes a reassuring mantra, its pleasantly droning pulse offering emotional stillness and companionship. Body as a River leans into somatic intuition, with a poignant line about making impermanence matter that frames grief as a physical process. The Bowie‑esque Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)? adds tension with intense background sounds that mirror her longing. Earlier work like Pompeii is cited for surreal, evocative lyrics that contextualize her lingering, amorphous aesthetic here.

Key Points

• Pieces of My Heart is the emotional apex, pairing soft, clear vocals with luminous, buoyant arrangements to articulate heartbreak without melodrama.
• The album’s strength is its patient, psychedelic art‑rock that embodies grief and acceptance, offering clarity and calm without chasing grand revelations.

Themes

Critic's Take

The review highlights multiple standout songs that embody the album's lush, '80s-tinged heartbreak mood, especially the theatrical "Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?", the plainly emotive "Pieces of My Heart", and the duet "Ride" with John Cale which adds density and history. The critic praises Le Bon's craft and stylistic evolution, likening the record's sadness to David Bowie’s Low and noting its synth swells and string arrangements. These tracks are singled out for illustrating the album’s blend of elegiac atmosphere and melodic clarity, making the best songs effective at conveying sorrow without wallowing.

Key Points

• "Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?" best captures the album's narcotic, synth-driven heartbreak.
• The album's core strengths are its lush '80s-influenced arrangements and emotionally direct songwriting that balances elegiac mood with melodic clarity.

Themes

Critic's Take

The review highlights 'Love Unrehearsed', 'Ride', and 'Body as a River' as standout moments, praising their evocative imagery and emotional catharsis. Le Bon’s blending of influences and dramatic crescendos gives these tracks particular power. The saxophone and grand piano are noted as anchoring elements that elevate songs like 'Mothers of Riches' and 'Heaven Is No Feeling'. The hypnotic opener 'Jerome' and closer 'I Know What’s Nice' frame the record’s uneasy but deliberate emotional arc.

Key Points

• Love Unrehearsed is best for its surreal, metaphor-heavy imagery and emotional catharsis.
• The album’s core strengths are its transformative use of influences and the saxophone/piano backbone creating dramatic, artful songs.

Themes