We haven’t spoken to Cate Le Bon since 2016, when she was preparing to play Johnny Brenda’s while touring her brilliantly psychedelic-leaning fourth LP, Crab Day, featuring the drumming of Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa. However, the Welsh art pop singer/songwriter has had us out to a number of notable Philadelphia performances since then. That includes a 2017 double-headlining show at Underground Arts that had her sharing the bill with then-partner Tim Presley, an exceptionally intimate 2019 stop at Boot & Saddle behind Mexican Summer debut Reward, and a 2022 date at Union Transfer in support of 2022’s Pompeii, her biggest local headlining show ever. Well, Cate Le Bon is gearing up to return to Eraserhood’s biggest live music room on January 13th for our very first show of 2026.
Cate Le Bon’s January 13th stop at Union Transfer is the second night of her North American Run behind Michelangelo Dying, her seventh full-length, whose most recent single, “About Time,” you may have heard kick off the December edition of Philthy Radio (now streaming, courtesy of Y-Not Radio). The album — which was made between the Grecian island Hydra, Cardiff, London, Los Angeles, and the Californian desert, and dropped September 26th via Mexican Summer — revolves around the heartache of love and its aftermath, inspired by the conclusion of Le Bon’s relationship with Presley, which Uncut characterized as, “A left turn through a heat haze of heartbreak, stacked with deep-fried slow jams that draw on her more outré sensibilities.”
Following in the footsteps of Reward and Pompeii (whose tracks have been abundant throughout Le Bon’s recent tour of Europe and the UK), Michelangelo Dying sees Cate doing much of the playing and producing herself, although she was happy to enlist the help of collaborator Samur Khouja to share production duties, as he did on the previous two LPs. “There’s this idea that you could do everything yourself, but the value of having someone you completely trust, as I do Samur, be your co-pilot allows you to get completely lost knowing you’ll get pulled back in at the right moment. We have come to quietly move as one in the studio,” she said of their relationship in a recent press release.
In addition to Khouja, Michelangelo Dying features longstanding musical friends and collaborators Euan Hinshelwood on saxophone, Paul Jones on piano, Dylan Hadley on drums, and Valentina Magaletti on drums and percussion. The LP also features legend of legends John Cale, who appears on the album’s penultimate “Ride,” a fantastical exercise in mourning. Cate’s final show of 2025, at Barbicon in London, actually featured Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie filling in for Cale on the track. And while we’re not counting on that collaboration to repeat itself January 13th at Union Transfer, we are expecting it to be the best show the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection sees in the first month of 2026, so I’d highly recommend getting tickets below, and also reading my 2016 chat with Cate Le Bon.
*Get your tickets here.
**Read my 2016 chat with Cate Le Bon here.
