Cate Le Bon @ Knockdown Center, Queens, NY 9/30/26

  

Bill: Cate Le Bon/Lucrecia Dalt/Dagmar Zuniga

Venue: Knockdown Center, 52-19 Flushing Ave., Maspeth, Queens, NY

Date: Wednesday 9/30/26

Ticket: Free (Dice was $38.17 all in)

9pm Cate Le Bon

Active: 2007 (Penboyr, Carmarthenshire, Wales)

Latest Release: Michaelangelo Dying (Mexican Summer, 2025)

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When Cate Le Bon did her Psychic TV cover "Just Drifting,"  there was a certain air of familiarity with it, but I didn't quite know what it was.  Could this be Leonard Cohen? Bryan Ferry?  Nick Cave?  I was running the contenders through my head and I did not think of Genesis P-Oridge.  

Cate Le Bon has been a Mojo darling for some time and what I have heard over the years I liked enough for her to be on my endless bucket list to see.  Well the free Gods of experience bestowed entry to Knockdown although I couldn't get there in time to see the recently David Sylvian produced Lucrecia Dalt.

Cate was a little artier than I remember hearing from the music I liked about ten years ago.  Perhaps this is from the departure of longtime guitarist H. Hawkline.  The longest band member has been multi-instrumentalist Stephen Black aka Sweet Baboo who has played with Cate since 2009.  The rest of the touring band have only a year or few with Cate.

In her current band I thought Cate sounded like a cross between Chrissie Hynde and Julie Cruise.  I wouldn't compare her directly to either of their styles, but that was what I was thinking while the show was happening.    The song that stood out for me was "Is It Worth It? (Happy Birthday)" because she was checking out.  Until then, I was checking out too, even though I recognized the quality of the music.  Once we were checking out together, I felt better equiped to follow the music even if the Ghost of Genesis was the next best song of the night.  I probably need to deep dive the albums to memory to truly have any sort of opinion beyond form.