Romance Is a “Cold Hammer” for Chanteuse Cate Le Bon

Her new album “Crab Day” is an emotional roller-coaster ride well worth taking.



Cate Le Bon
Crab Day
Drag City

Courtesy of Drag City Records

With her stiff, quasi-Teutonic delivery and spare, Velvet Underground-inflected guitar rock, you might think the Welsh-born Cate Le Bon (no relation to Duran Duran’s Simon) is trying to channel the zombie chanteuse Nico on her fourth album. But listen closely to the sneakily addictive Crab Day and it starts to feel more like an affectionate update than a dutiful purist homage. There’s a wry, raised-eyebrow quality to Le Bon’s reserved vocals that hints at a playful streak in “I’m a Dirty Attic,” where she murmurs languidly, “I want to make sense with you.” Doing an about-face, she offers a somber meditation worthy of Bryan Ferry on the lovely ballad “Love Is Not Love,” regarding romance as a “cold hammer” and sighing, “I don’t know how to love you right.” From wacky (“Wonderful”) to heartfelt (“I Was Born on the Wrong Day”), Crab Day is an emotional roller-coaster ride well worth taking.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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