Lemon Jelly
Lemonjelly.ky
[XL/Beggars]
Rating: 4.2
The Pitchfork staffer originally assigned to write a review of Lemon
Jelly's EP collection determined that he was too cool for the job. And I have
to agree. The guys gets sent demo recordings from Icelandic bands seeking his
guidance/approval on material for their forthcoming albums. Rumor has it that
Stephen Frears consulted him about what vinyl should be prominently displayed
during High Fidelity. He's too cool to even wear vintage RayBan
Aviator shades! Suffice to say, the guy is fucking cool.
So Lemonjelly.ky was passed to me-- apparently because my cool-to-nerd
ratio needs major improving. Though I haven't yet got what it takes to carry
off designer stay-press suits, I feel comfortable in my facsimile RayBan
Aviators. But even I'm too cool for the lurid banality of this record.
This compilation of three EPs' worth of downtempo ditties aims for the same
market that scarfed up the Beta Band's Three EPs disc. But the
similarities swiftly end there. Though the packaging is lush, deluxe and
probably shortlisted for a graphic design award, Lemonjelly.ky's nine
tracks consist largely of samples from atrocious Nana Mouskouri songs and
soundclips nipped from 100 Strings mood music albums. What binds these
samples together is a series of predicable hip-hop beats and root-note
basslines. In the UK, Lemon Jelly are probably pin-ups for a certain type of
elitist freshman who considers himself ever-so superior for conspicuously
enjoying this stuff.
By arranging Lemonjelly.ky in chronological order, we can at least
appreciate that, by July 2000's The Midnight EP, it had at last
occurred to the duo of Fred Deakin and Nick Franglin that splicing Bert
Kaempfert with drum machine presets wasn't going to get them the St Tropez
mansion they'd been promising themselves since The Bath EP was released
in August 1998. I get all mangled up inside about Lemonjelly.ky as a
whole, but it's The Bath EP that gets me more frayed than a tow-rope in
a high-summer tractor pull. "Nervous Tension" samples a relaxation tape
monologue which, unironically, has the opposite effect on my well-being. The
only person who might be truly thrilled with "A Tune for Jack" is Jack himself--
the rest of us can live without hearing Johnny Pearson's Sounds Orchestral
version of "Wichita Linesman" mixed with the hypothetical beats of the Captain
and Tennille's deck-shoe shuffling version of Young MC's "Bust a Move."
"The Stauton Lick" heads back into instructional tape land for a lesson in
basic folk guitar techniques, and ends up sounding like a 14 year-old
imagining Fairport Convention covering New Order's "All the Way." "His Majesty
King Raam" is the sick fantasy of two thirty-something Brits-- a kindergarten
tale broadcast on the BBC's "Jackanory" program enhanced with Henry Mancini's
"Days of Wine and Roses" and Captain and Tennille's deck-shoe shuffling
version of Shaquille O'Neal's "I Know I Got Skillz."
After the trite and scoffing appropriation of bad taste, the Midnight
EP seriously engages. Here, Lemon Jelly have gotten beyond novelty value and
begin to layer elements and to distill some palpable beauty from their thrift
store sources. Thus, "Kneel Before Your God" threads folk guitar lines with
delicate turntablism and seraphic synth lines; "Page One" is skittering,
piano-driven, and club-ready. And the guys display hitherto unexpected
restraint during "Come," in which they refrain from lubricated smut in favor
of a sparse harmonica-lead treat. It's almost as though the schoolboy graphic
design team within the duo has been partially defeated by their adult musician
personas. But the rout is merely an incipient one; this more mature Lemon
Jelly is far from being a confirmed victory for subtle moderation.
Because the three tracks that comprise the Midnight EP rely far less
on snickering, snobby kitsch, we can hope that Lemon Jelly will eschew juvenile
mockery and perfect their technique. Only then will Deakin and Franglin
overcome the tossed-off vapidity of Lemonjelly.ky and take their place
with chill-out's recent masters, Zero 7, the Broadway Project, and Blue
States. Of course, if the band choose to further investigate bad taste,
they'd better consult WFMU's outsider music expert Irwin Chusid, and study
Stock, Hausen and Walkman's considerably cooler Organ Transplants
series.
-Paul Cooper