There's a particular way artists talk about San Francisco when the city has truly mattered to them-not as scenery, but as a place where something shifted. For Cate Le Bon, the Bay Area lives in that register, folded into memory, music, and a formative period that still resonates beneath the surface of the Welsh singer-songwriter's work. "I've spent a lot of time in San Francisco," she says, simply.
But at the same time, there's a very deep sense that love is something that we do, and it is the product of our agency, both with respect to fostering a loving relationship, but also seeing and attending to another person, which is something that we do and not just something that happens to us. In many ways, the song is about that.
The idea for the Opalite music video crash landed into my imagination when I was doing promo for The Life of a Showgirl. I was a guest on one of my favorite shows, @TheGrahamNortonShowOfficial. For those of you who aren't familiar, it's a UK late night show where Graham Norton (the insanely charismatic and lovable host) invites a random group of actors, entertainers, musicians, etc to be on his show and we all sit there and chat like it's a dinner party.
A magazine sent me to the ATP festival at Pontins in Camber Sands to interview the Beastie Boys of noise, Wolf Eyes. The interview fell to pieces when the band, in a state of great psychic refreshment, all wearing Manowar T-shirts, refused to stop watching a Manowar DVD and signalled they would only answer questions if they related to Manowar. The rest of the day was exemplary one of the best ever walking on the beach, visiting record shops.
