Album Review: Cate Le Bon, “Cyrk” (Control Group)

Rating: 76
Welsh singer Cate Le Bon’s first showcase seems, in retrospect, like an artful bit of misdirection: She delivered the icy R&B female part on Neon Neon’s “I Lust You,” a 2008 electro-pop duet with her mentor, Super Furry Animals leader Gruff Rhys. Following her much darker 2009 debut disc, “Me Oh My,” Le Bon’s “Cyrk” sounds like a recently unearthed artifact, a collection of irresistibly wry and playful ballads and bashers that, much like the Super Furries or Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, delivers a Cardiff-bred take on late-1960s psych-rock.

Specifically, Le Bon’s vocal timbre suggests Nico with more range — she could easily get away with putting a banana on the cover of “Cyrk” given the mournful, accented delivery on the stately ballad “Puts Me to Work.” But Le Bon is not nearly as narcotic as Nico, opening “Cyrk” with the winking magnificence of “Falcon Eyed,” which takes breaks from a 4/4 punk rhythm to indulge in a waltzing, genre-bent, Bee Gees-referencing refrain: “It’s the curl in his hair and his falcon-eyed stare / He is more than a woman to me.” The singer’s voice can serve as the strong center in a storm, as it does on the title track, or as the soft counterpoint to menacing Farfisa organ attacks (“Julia”).