Cate Le Bon ★★★★ Pompeii MEXICAN SUMMER. CD/DL/LP/MC

John Grant and Deerhunter producer goes with her own distinctive flow on sixth LP.

You might expect a record born in solitude to represent a newly intense distillation of its creator’s sound. Pompeii, Cate Le Bon’s follow-up to 2019’s Reward, initially suggests the opposite is true: isolation leads to a damping of overt quirks and flourishes and a greyscale wash of synths and introspection. Yet while the bright volatile reds and oranges of Le Bon’s earlier records (not to mention Drinks, her hairtrigger collaboration with Tim Presley) have cooled to something darker, she still presses a wild array of musical patterns and textures into

Pompeii’s surfaces. Imaginary Euro-pop hit French Boys, the title track’s delicate John Caleat-the-circus whirl, Dirt On The Bed’s experimental-theatre sax: the corners of these songs might not snag quite as dangerously as before, but there’s no blunting of the fascination Le Bon’s songwriting so expertly exerts.