Cate Le Bon – It Is Worth It (Happy Birthday)?
Cate Le Bon presents the new single/video, “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?” from her new album, Michelangelo Dying, out September 26th via Mexican Summer.
Following the “Heaven Is No Feeling,” “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?” serves as the album’s centerpiece with Le Bon powerfully evoking the simultaneous universality and unknowability of love. Her admission, “I thought about your mother / I hope she knew I loved her,” catches devastatingly in the chest. The song’s accompanying video was directed by H. Hawkline.
Michelangelo Dying’s creation was led by pure emotion, usurping the album Le Bon thought she was making. The product of all-consuming heartache, her feelings overrode her reluctance to write an album about love, and in the process became a kind of exorcism. What emerges is a wonderfully iridescent attempt to photograph a wound before it closes up — but which in doing so, picks at it too. It’s a record centered on the many states of existence within love and its aftermath as Le Bon found herself surrendering to the abstraction of intense feeling and the grieving of a fantasy.
While in recent years Le Bon has become a sought-after producer, working alongside Wilco, Horsegirl, Devendra Banhart and St. Vincent, the production of Michelangelo Dying was shared with collaborator Samur Khouja. To a similar end, her longstanding collaboration with saxophonist Euan Hinshelwood is a main thread of her sonic landscape. He’s joined by similarly close friends: Paul Jones on piano; Dylan Hadley on drums, Valentina Magaletti on drums and percussion, as well as John Cale, who makes a poignant appearance on the mournful “Ride.”
An exercise in the viscerality of life, of love, of humanity for both listener and artist, Michelangelo Dying knows what it is to hold, to be held, and to be exquisitely, profoundly alone. There are ultimately, Cate asserts, “No revelations. No conclusions. There is no reason. There is repetition and chaos.”
Le Bon will embark on a tour across Europe, the United Kingdom and North America kicking off in late 2025 and continuing into early 2026.
Cate Le Bon Tour Dates
Thu. Oct. 9 – Cardiff, UK @ Llais – Wales Millennium Centre
Fri. Oct. 10 – Manchester, UK @ New Century
Sat. Oct. 11 – Leeds, UK @ Howard Assembly Rooms
Mon. Oct. 13 – Glasgow, UK @ St. Luke’s
Tue. Oct. 14 – York, UK @ The Crescent
Wed. Oct. 15 – Gateshead, UK @ Glasshouse
Fri. Oct. 17 – Brighton, UK @ Chalk
Thu. Nov. 6 – Madrid, ES @ Mon
Fri. Nov. 7 – Barcelona, ES @ Paral·lel 62
Sun. Nov. 9 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique
Mon. Nov. 10 – Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg
Wed. Nov. 12 -Berlin, DE @ Säälchen
Thu. Nov. 13 – Hamburg, DE @ Nochtspeicher
Fri. Nov. 14 – Cologne, DE @ Gebäude 9
Sun Nov. 16 – Paris, FR @ Cabaret Sauvage
Tue. Nov. 18 – London, UK @ Barbican
Mon. Jan. 12 – Washington, DC @ The Howard Theatre
Tue. Jan. 13 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Thu. Jan. 15 – Boston, MA @ The Sinclair
Fri. Jan. 16 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
Sat. Jan. 17 – Hudson, NY @ Basilica Hudson
Mon. Jan. 19 – Montréal, QC @ Le National
Tue. Jan. 20 – Toronto, ON @ The Great Hall
Thu. Jan. 22 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
Fri. Jan. 23 – Milwaukee, WI @ Vivarium
Sat. Jan. 24 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
Tue. Jan. 27 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
Wed. Jan. 28 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Fri. Jan. 30 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Sat. Jan. 31 – Los Angeles, CA @The Belasco
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