The New Cue #498 June 6: Cate Le Bon, Shame, Elisabeth Elektra, Wunderhorse, Bobby Conn, Water From Your Eyes, Elbow, Brògeal

"More chaos!"

It’s Friday!

That’s a fact, unless you have saved it to read on another day, which is fine, it’s your edition, you can do what you want with it, you can even tell all your friends about it and encourage them to become subscribers, that’s totally fine, we don’t mind:

Today we have some standard Recommender shenanigans from your hosts Ted and Niall, directing you to all the good music and none of the bad music they’ve heard this week, plus a Release Valve Q&A with Elisabeth Elektra.

Here's this week’s playlist for you to enjoy:

And here it is for the Apple Music squadron.

See you on Monday, enjoy the edition,

Ted and Niall

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Recommender Pt. 1

Ted Kessler

Is Cate Le Bon the most influential and consequential British (Welsh, specifically) musician of the modern era? Just putting it out there. Spit balling. You tell me after her seventh album Michelangelo Dying is released on September 26^th: we’ll probably know in the following months if music released in its wake by everyone else is drenched in similarly watery reverb, filled with deadpan vocals exploring the big themes of love and grief, reflecting melodies beamed from distant dying stars. For in the three years since her last album, Pompeii, Le Bon has been among the most in-demand producers, delivering albums by artists as diverse Devendra Banhart, St Vincent and Wilco, and the one thing they all have in common is that while working with Le Bon they all tend to bend creatively towards her light. Her sound – partly Bowie in Berlin, Siouxsie and The Banshees in that imperial phase between 1979 and ‘84, Laurie Anderson at her most stately – becomes overwhelmingly hypnotic. Others cannot help but follow. Her music seeps into everyone else. And, as this new record on early listens appears to be her best, other artists will inevitably be sucked ever towards its sphere of influence. In the meantime, have this first single from it, Heaven Is No Feeling. “Don’t you want more love than you ever dreamed of…”

I wonder what Cate Le Bon would do with Water from Your Eyes? Theirs is an artistic animus hewn from similar sources, so I’m sure Cate would buff them up nicely. The duo have nevertheless made a huge leap forwards without her on Life Signs, the first track from their August 22 second album, It’s A Beautiful Place. It’s a very ambitious song, covering about five very different styles – rockabilly, nu-metal, shoegazey dream pop, Wire-like new wave, grunge - at once, but it’s still really catchy. Looking forward to the album.