Today, not one but two members of the indie rock elite, both emblematic of their decades, have released new albums. Animal Collective, whose wild-child exuberance helped define the sound of the genre in the 00s, have returned with the balmy Time Skiffs, their strongest album since 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Meanwhile, Mitski reckons with her indie A-list status on Laurel Hell, a sleek, streamlined record that details her increasing dissatisfaction with the life of a modern rock star. But while both those albums are strong (and we’ll talk more about Animal Collective next week), there’s a stealth contender for the best album of the week: Cate Le Bon’s Pompeii.
Pompeii’s first two singles, “Running Away” and “Moderation,” were both covered here, and the album delivers on their promise. Le Bon has been making great albums for over a decade, but Pompeii represents her peak as a songwriter, crafting enigmatic lyrics that pair well with its uncanny, shapeshifting music. There’s a waxy sheen to the synths and saxophones on this album, nodding to the artificiality of 80s sophisti-pop while indulging in its lushness. It’s as woozy and strange as the best hypnagogic pop, but it has a clarity of vision, a sense of purpose that past trend-hoppers lacked.
“Dirt on the Bed” is the album opener, and even if you don’t look at the track list it feels like an album opener. Puffs of Le Bon’s breath mix with a clanging, echoing synth pulse, and it makes for a tense intro: think of the steady, sinister lope of “Didascalies” from The Favourite soundtrack and you’re not far off. Runny smears of saxophone lurch forward, as though dragging themselves across the floor, and for a moment it feels strangely formless. Then, in comes a rhythm guitar, and “Dirt on the Bed” snaps into place.
At the center of everything is Le Bon, who has created this bizarre soundscape and feels utterly at home. She has a voice that’s simultaneously dreamy and earthbound, and she never sounds like she’s daydreaming. She sings odd melodies that, if isolated, would sound unnatural–if you were to whistle them around someone, they might think you were trying to annoy them. But in the gestalt of the song, it sounds as natural as the saxophones and the synths and the rhythm; that is to say, not natural at all, and yet exactly the way it should be.
The lyrics are, as ever, opaque, but never meaningless. Le Bon looks at normal situations through fresh eyes, picking up on details and phrases that you might not have thought of yet feel completely connected to reality: take 2013’s “Mug Museum,” which uses a bedroom full of empty cups to illustrate the clutter and memory of grief. “Dirt on the Bed” isn’t as neat as that, but there’s a rich vein of meaning under the surface. It’s about the nature of sound, which “reinvents the surface of everything you touch,” and the way it deteriorates into “recycling air.” At least the air recycled itself into something as strange and fascinating as this.
