The Fountain That Empties The World

Cate Le Bon “Running Away”

Cate Le Bon often sings lyrics expressing exasperation and annoyance though her new record Pompeii but it’s always in this aloof and steady tone, like she’s always trying to keep up some sense of decorum. This vocal delivery and the cold geometric quality of her compositions suggests an even keel, but it’s really just an accurate depiction of adult emotions – dialed down, managed, nagging questions that get deferred indefinitely. The lyrics of “Running Away” move between declarations (“I’m sick of soft hearts”), clarifications (“I’m not cold by nature”), and lamentations (“You can’t put your arms around it, it’s not there anymore”), but as much as those lines leap out as provocative phrases, the emotional inertia implied by the music is expressed in a more conceptual line in the chorus: “Multi-directional love with nowhere left to go.”

Buy it from Bandcamp.