Cate Le Bon - Reward review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The Guardian 0

(Mexican Summer)
Lovely, airy, occasionally rocking songs are underpinned by elliptical lyrics and seeping loneliness on Le Bon’s remarkable album

There are several time-honoured options available to the artist who is a decade or so into their career and keen to reset their creativity. You can surround yourself with a fresh set of musicians, or hire a new producer whose approach to music seems markedly different to your own. You can self-consciously dabble in genres you’ve hitherto avoided, seeing how your songs adapt to an unsullied and unexpected setting. Or, if you’re Welsh artist Cate Le Bon, you can move from Los Angeles to the Lake District (or, as one US writer had it, “the remote village of Cumbria”) to live alone and take a course in carving wooden furniture.

Related: Cate Le Bon’s cultural highlights