MAGMA MIA
UP in Topanga Canyon, there’s a house, three storeys of redwood outside and in. It used to be Neil Young’s place while he worked on After The Gold Rush, but today the bedroom where he dreamed of silver spaceships is occupied by Cate Le Bon, who is staying here for a month to produce Devendra Banhart’s new record.
“We wanted to be out of LA and away from distractions,” Le Bon explains. “It’s pretty spectacular here. I believe I’m sleeping in Neil’s old bedroom. It’s nice to think of all the songs that were hibernating in his head while he sloped around the house.”
Young and Le Bon have more than just that house in common. For a start, they’re both foreigners from chillier climes, drawn to the yellow haze of California; but deeper than that, they’re both artists with an irresistible drive to move forward creatively. While Young drifted into braver sonic margins after …Gold Rush and Harvest, so Le Bon’s music has got stranger and more ambitious since 2013’s Mug Museum, “a classic record” according to Banhart.
“I don’t really like looking back too much, you know?” Le Bon says. “I guess it takes a while, especially as a woman, to find your space and be comfortable in saying what you want and what you don’t want. Yeah, it took me about 10 years!”
In February, Le Bon is releasing . Her sixth solo record, it follows up the Faustian clatter of and the more meditative with nine synth-heavy, echoing and melodic songs, both melancholic and grooving. Whereas 2019’s was written on piano while Le Bon was attending was composed on bass guitar. “I was obsessed with bass, so that was leading things, which meant I had to learn how to play guitar differently,” she explains. “Then synths became the glue that tied everything together.”
