Cate Le Bon’s sixth solo album Pompeii (Mexican Summer) is one of the most acclaimed albums of 2022, and listeners craving more where that came from are in luck: The Welsh singer/songwriter has shared the video for “Typical Love,” a standalone track from the Pompeii sessions, ahead of her North American tour in support of the album.
Quivering, discordant keys, shuffling percussion and highlighter-bright guitar strums serve as the alien lectern from which Le Bon espouses cryptic concepts of affection: “Mine is like / An invite to a demolition / And the art of saying nothing / Typical Love.” Le Bon’s own bass throbs as her voice tap-dances across octaves, delivering romantic anti-oaths like, “Nothing ever changed in your corridor eyes / Rely on me, baby / Rely on air / Only a shadow again.” She chants the title through the song’s disorienting crescendo, as if to expose the falsehood of the very concept. A “typical love” does not exist, Le Bon seems to scream, because a typical human being doesn’t, either.
“‘Typical Love’ was a product of a rare jam session with dearest genius friend, Stella Mozgawa,” Le Bon says in a statement. “The outline, written on bass along to one of Stella’s infectious grooves, was taken into the Pompeii sessions where I disassembled and reassembled it many times, but it always felt like a second cousin to the other tracks so was put aside for a rainy day.”
“Typical Love” co-directors Stefan Ramírez Pérez and Phil Collins shot the video on 16mm film in Cologne, Germany, drawing from Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished 1964 feature Inferno, among other cinematic touchstones.
Collins expanded on the visual’s inspirations in a statement:
Cate has always embodied a timeless mystique which distinctively conjures up the European silver screen. If Pompeii sounded like Antonioni at his most heartfelt and lyrical, then “Typical Love,” with its elegantly cinematic scope and crystalline propulsion, gestures towards the twisted melodramas of Henri-Georges Clouzot, Georges Franju, as well as the off-kilter glamour of Ilona Baltrush or early Ulrike Ottinger. And so, an important point of departure was working with the physicality and alchemy of 16mm, especially the unguarded moments at which the delicate tension between performer and character is acutely palpable.
Le Bon’s North American tour kicks off in San Diego on Sept. 27, with stops in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York City and Washington, D.C., and support from A. Savage of Parquet Courts. Later in the fall, she’ll play a handful of U.K. and E.U. dates, sharing bills with the likes of black midi, Caroline, Arab Strap, Courtney Barnett and more.
Watch the “Typical Love” video below, and find Le Bon’s 2011 Daytrotter session and upcoming tour dates further down.
Cate Le Bon Tour Dates:
September
27 – San Diego, CA @ Belly Up Tavern *
28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater *
29 – Ojai, CA @ Deer Lodge * – SOLD OUT
30 – Berkeley, CA @ UC Theatre
October
01 – Big Sur, CA @ Henry Miller Memorial Library *
06 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *
07 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony *
08 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall *
09 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat *
30 – Cardiff, UK @ Donald Gordon Theatre – Llais 2022 Festival ^
November
07 – Bruxelles, BE @ Le Botanique
09 – Lorient, FR @ Hydrophone &
10 – Nantes, FR @ Le Lieue Unique ~
12 – Utrecht, NE @ Le Guess Who?
13 – North London, UK @ Roundhouse #
(* w/ A. Savage [of Parquet Courts])
(& w/ Caroline)
(^ w/ black midi)
(~ w/ Arab Strap)
(# w/ Courtney Barnett, Big Joanie, Fake Fruit, Dehd, Gretel Hänlyn)
