Cate le Bon - Me Oh My

Over recent weeks I have been enjoying greatly Cate le Bon's excellent debut album Me Oh My. Released on Gruff Rhys's new Irony Bored label it is a mixture of the melancholy and the (sometimes wilfully) kooky. In terms of setting these songs are essentially pastoral and thus we find an abundance of references to forests, hounds, fields, the sea etc. But her natural universe is deeply imbued with a folk tale darkness. Screams, black clouds, shadows and death, haunt these love songs to such a degree that you begin to worry for le Bon's mental health. Although, in essence, an alt.folk album, the production and instrumentation push many of her tunes into stranger, more psychedelic pastures. It's an arrangement that works wonderfully well. Highly recommended.