CATE LE BON Cyrk lyrics
Cyrk is the sophomore studio album by Cate Le Bon, released on January 17, 2012. The album's title is Polish for "Circus".
In a 2009 interview with Pitchfork, Super Furry Animals' frontman Gruff Rhys admitted he was first drawn to the Velvet Underground because he thought they were fellow Welshman, having noticed John Cale's familiarly regional accent on White Light/White Heat's "The Gift". In light of this anecdote, his ongoing mentorship of Penboyr-raised/Cardiff-based avant-pop chanteuse Cate Le Bon amounts to more than just an elder statesman lending support to the next great Welsh hope; rather, in Le Bon, he presumably hears the genuine realization of that mistaken assumption. While Le Bon's cool, disaffected voice was a natural fit for Rhys' electro-fied side project, Neon Neon, the music she creates under her own name more closely resembles The Velvet Underground & Nico relocated from Warhol's Factory to a Welsh farmhouse, displaying an equal affinity for narcotic melodies and jangle-riff repetition, but with the East Village grime replaced by a certain lambswool coziness.
Like many debut albums by folk-schooled solo artists trying to assert their identity, Le Bon's Me Oh My (released in 2009 on Rhys' Irony Bored Records label), could come off as both whimsically precious ("Sad Sad Feet") and state-of-the-world serious ("Terror of the Man"), but showed a willingness to disrupt its serene surroundings with cutting lyrical barbs and well-timed blasts of psychedelicized guitar fuzz. The follow-up, CYRK, does little to upset Le Bon's pastoral, turn-of-the-1970s prog-pop alchemy (as she sang on Me Oh My, "I like what I like and I like what I know"), but as its title-- the Polish word for "circus"-- indicates, it's several degrees more playful and irreverent.
Where Me Oh My tended to reveal its charms and idiosyncrasies gradually, CYRK lets its guard down almost immediately with "Falcon Eyed", a scrappy, start-stop gallop that suggests Le Bon has been trading pen-pal notes with the Fiery Furnaces' Eleanor Friedberger. The song's punkish drive proves anomalous to what follows, but its mischievous energy carries through to CYRK's statelier turns as, much more so than on Me Oh My, Le Bon uses her deadpan delivery to droll effect. She takes particular delight in infusing innocent, golden-oldies-radio sounds with decidedly unromantic sentiment: "Puts Me to Work" is an ode to domestic unrest and ennui that nonetheless boasts all the sweetness and grace of the first-dance selection at a wedding, while "The Man I Wanted" finds her communicating desire for her one and only through a catatonic stare, before opportunistically asking him, "Where is the payout?"
But more than just chart her progression as a singer and songwriter, CYRK also sees Le Bon and her four-piece band developing into a crack psych-rock outfit that consistently leads the songs into unexpected places, from the wiggy guitar jams that overtake the title track and "Fold the Cloth", to the piano-rolled clamor on "Through the Mill" that sounds like a haunted house coming alive after dark. Tellingly, the closing two-part suite "Ploughing Out" serves as an autobiographical testament to LeBon's personal and musical evolution, beginning as low-key lullaby referencing her country roots and then yielding to an anthemic, acid-rockin' celebration of escape ("we'll be on the last boat out of here," she repeats excitedly) that spirals into joyous, saxophone-fired cacophony. Le Bon's days as a farmgirl in northern Wales may be long behind her, but she's clearly held on to certain agricultural principles: namely, that the right amounts of patience and nurturing can produce glorious yields. by Stuart Berman, Pitchfork
In a 2009 interview with Pitchfork, Super Furry Animals' frontman Gruff Rhys admitted he was first drawn to the Velvet Underground because he thought they were fellow Welshman, having noticed John Cale's familiarly regional accent on White Light/White Heat's "The Gift". In light of this anecdote, his ongoing mentorship of Penboyr-raised/Cardiff-based avant-pop chanteuse Cate Le Bon amounts to more than just an elder statesman lending support to the next great Welsh hope; rather, in Le Bon, he presumably hears the genuine realization of that mistaken assumption. While Le Bon's cool, disaffected voice was a natural fit for Rhys' electro-fied side project, Neon Neon, the music she creates under her own name more closely resembles The Velvet Underground & Nico relocated from Warhol's Factory to a Welsh farmhouse, displaying an equal affinity for narcotic melodies and jangle-riff repetition, but with the East Village grime replaced by a certain lambswool coziness.
Like many debut albums by folk-schooled solo artists trying to assert their identity, Le Bon's Me Oh My (released in 2009 on Rhys' Irony Bored Records label), could come off as both whimsically precious ("Sad Sad Feet") and state-of-the-world serious ("Terror of the Man"), but showed a willingness to disrupt its serene surroundings with cutting lyrical barbs and well-timed blasts of psychedelicized guitar fuzz. The follow-up, CYRK, does little to upset Le Bon's pastoral, turn-of-the-1970s prog-pop alchemy (as she sang on Me Oh My, "I like what I like and I like what I know"), but as its title-- the Polish word for "circus"-- indicates, it's several degrees more playful and irreverent.
Where Me Oh My tended to reveal its charms and idiosyncrasies gradually, CYRK lets its guard down almost immediately with "Falcon Eyed", a scrappy, start-stop gallop that suggests Le Bon has been trading pen-pal notes with the Fiery Furnaces' Eleanor Friedberger. The song's punkish drive proves anomalous to what follows, but its mischievous energy carries through to CYRK's statelier turns as, much more so than on Me Oh My, Le Bon uses her deadpan delivery to droll effect. She takes particular delight in infusing innocent, golden-oldies-radio sounds with decidedly unromantic sentiment: "Puts Me to Work" is an ode to domestic unrest and ennui that nonetheless boasts all the sweetness and grace of the first-dance selection at a wedding, while "The Man I Wanted" finds her communicating desire for her one and only through a catatonic stare, before opportunistically asking him, "Where is the payout?"
But more than just chart her progression as a singer and songwriter, CYRK also sees Le Bon and her four-piece band developing into a crack psych-rock outfit that consistently leads the songs into unexpected places, from the wiggy guitar jams that overtake the title track and "Fold the Cloth", to the piano-rolled clamor on "Through the Mill" that sounds like a haunted house coming alive after dark. Tellingly, the closing two-part suite "Ploughing Out" serves as an autobiographical testament to LeBon's personal and musical evolution, beginning as low-key lullaby referencing her country roots and then yielding to an anthemic, acid-rockin' celebration of escape ("we'll be on the last boat out of here," she repeats excitedly) that spirals into joyous, saxophone-fired cacophony. Le Bon's days as a farmgirl in northern Wales may be long behind her, but she's clearly held on to certain agricultural principles: namely, that the right amounts of patience and nurturing can produce glorious yields. by Stuart Berman, Pitchfork
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