photo by Veerle Frissen

There was a day last week when girls outnumbered boys at The Word office, and we finally managed to get our new favourite lady, Cate Le Bon, playing on the stereo. Her first album Me Oh My is an addictive exercise in dark folk rock – vocal sweetness measured out against earthy lyrics, occasionally buzzing guitars and touches of off-kilter noise in the background. The hint of something nasty going on in the lyrics is mirrored in the intimacy of the recording – there’s a hint of horror stories whispered in a darkened room. Ex associate of Neon Neon, Cate’s delicious voice, coupled to her unpretentious delivery comes off like a richer Welsh version of Nico (we must admit to not being the first to make that comparison – it’s something in the combination of purity and imperiousness). She’s a nifty songwriter – tracks like Burn Until The End and Shoeing The Bones have been buzzing round our head all week – yet nothing feels compromised.  The neat ten track album is structured for a time when music releases actually had two sides rather than the featherweight digital ambiguity of a cover shot on iTunes. The English probably won’t admit this, but since we’re Belgian we’re going to come out and confess to finding the accent gives us a bit of thrill in some really surprising ways – who’d have thought we’d get off on somebody singing the word ‘vitamin’? ‘Cocoon’ was pretty good too…

Cate Le Bon, Me Oh My  is out now on Irony Bored

photo by Veerle Frissen