Cate Le Bon

From Penboyr to Cardiff

Cate Le Bon was born Cate Timothy on March 4, 1983 in Penboyr, Carmarthenshire; her stage name is a tribute to Simon Le Bon. She sings in English and Welsh and plays guitar, and she has lived in Cardiff, Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. After backing vocals on Richard James's The Seven Sleepers Den (2006), she self-released the single "No One Can Drag Me Down" in 2007 and supported Gruff Rhys on his solo UK tour. She sang on Neon Neon's "I Lust U" in 2008, the year of her Welsh-language EP Edrych yn Llygaid Ceffyl Benthyg on Peski.

Her albums are Me Oh My (October 12, 2009, Irony Bored), Cyrk (January 17, 2012, The Control Group), Mug Museum (November 12, 2013, Turnstile and Wichita, produced by Noah Georgeson and Josiah Steinbrick) and Crab Day (April 15, 2016, Drag City). Jeff Tweedy called her one of the best out there making music now, and Laura Snapes described Crab Day as a ringleader who's prepared to stake out uncertain territory. With Tim Presley she also made two albums as DRINKS: Hermits on Holiday (2015) and Hippo Lite (2018).

Reward and Pompeii

Reward (May 24, 2019, Mexican Summer), produced with Samur Khouja and Josiah Steinbrick, was made after she moved to a remote village in Cumbria and took a furniture-making course; sessions followed at Stinson Beach and Joshua Tree, and she cites Kate Bush, Pharoah Sanders and Arthur Russell. It scored 87 on Metacritic, Pitchfork gave it 8.4 and Uncut 9 out of 10, and it was nominated for the Mercury Prize.

Pompeii (February 4, 2022) was made in Cardiff, her first Welsh recording since Cyrk and after working in Reykjavik on John Grant's Boy from Michigan. Khouja flew to Cardiff in January 2021 after they had considered studios in Chile, Norway, Costa Rica and Mexico, and they set up in the bedroom of a house she had lived in about 15 years earlier, working about 12 hours a day. She played nearly everything, with Stella Mozgawa on drums and the saxophonists Euan Hinshelwood and Stephen Black working remotely, to synthesizer sounds inspired by 1980s Japanese city pop. She has said the bass lines are the spine of the record. It reached number 31 on the Billboard 200 and 70 in the UK, scored 85 on Metacritic and was Pitchfork's number 20 album of 2022.

Producer and recent work

As a producer she has worked on H. Hawkline's In the Pink of Condition, John Grant's Boy from Michigan (2021), Deerhunter's Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? (2019, co-producer), Kurt Vile's Back to Moon Beach (2023), Wilco's Cousin (2023), A. Savage's Several Songs About Fire (2023) and Horsegirl's Phonetics On and On (2025), and she played bass on two songs and produced four more on St. Vincent's All Born Screaming (2024). She joined John Cale at the Barbican with the London Contemporary Orchestra in 2018. Michelangelo Dying (September 26, 2025) was made with Khouja at studios in Cardiff, Hydra, London and Los Angeles, with John Cale on "Ride", and scored 88 on Metacritic. Setlist.fm shows a long list of shows, and she played NPR Tiny Desk in 2014 and KEXP in 2019.