Cate Le Bon, Koko, gig review: Captivating and unarguably inventive

There is such drama to her haunting music that it leaves an unsettlingly effect

Musician Cate Le Bon (Press Handout)

Watching Cate Le Bon is comparable to being swept up in a category five hurricane and being dumped unceremoniously back down to earth. She sings with such intensity and there is such drama to her haunting music that it leaves an unsettlingly, completely beguiling, effect.

Le Bon has been repeatedly compared to the hypnotic wintry sounds of Nico and there is still much of that languid starkness there, but the Welsh singer has a morbidness that is all her own.

“Wild” was performed with perfect abandon; the band played to a slow hypnotic beat before ending with a dramatic, all-encompassing finale, as clips from The Exorcist were projected in the background.

“I Think I Knew”, sung with Perfume Genius, was less obviously macabre, but still with a sweetly uneasy appeal; psych-folk sirens echoing throughout. “Cuckoo Through the Walls” is similarly eerie, with wide doleful vocals that seer through discordant guitar clanging.

There's an unpredictability to Le Bon that makes her captivating to watch.

Half way through one track she dropped her guitar to the floor in a way that would make most musicians shudder.

She's confusing, complicated and unarguably inventive.