I'm a sucker for a goofy sample. And ever since I first heard Lost Horizons, I've been humming an insidious children's tune sung by a theatrical English baritone: "All the ducks are swimming in the water, falderalderaldah, falderalderaldah." That voice is sampled in "Nice Weather for Ducks", a happy-slappy lollipop of a song that nicely sums this record up: Sunny, bright, and vaguely irritating.

On Lemon Jelly's first full-length, following a collection of their first three EPs called Lemonjelly.ky, Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen stuck to a simple pattern. They made eight upbeat, ebullient instrumentals with slick beats, synths like plastic-cast rainbows, trumpet solos, acoustic guitars, and killer vocal samples: Charlton Heston moaning on about how he's a "Ramblin' Man", or on "Space Walk", the ecstatic transmission of an astronaut proclaiming "it's beautiful" again and again. This is the perfect disc to throw on after your four-disc Ultrachill Dub Groove Mix has put the whole party to sleep. It's like eight flavors of ribbon candy, beach balls hitting the ground like hail, and a big plastic clown face that blows helium.

The novelty wears thin, though, and most of the tracks aren't as neat as the samples they're built around. The "Ducks" song is the most likeable (the meringue band that shows up in the bridge clinches it), but Lemon Jelly's own parts sound blunt and somewhat bland. They do better when they ditch the novelty techniques: "Return to Patagonia" has propulsive melodies and a dramatic rhythm, and "The Curse of Ka'Zar" builds a loping mix of harmony voices, jazzy rhythm samples and anthemic brass to a swollen climax.

"Experiment Number Six" is the only break in the mood. While the music stays in the same loungy/poppy vein, the subject is haunting: A detached doctor's voice narrates an experiment in which a human subject is killed with a stimulant and analyzed as his vital signs drop. It's so different and sinister that it's more intriguing than the rest of the album, and yet annoyingly displaced-- especially when the next song ("Closer") throws you right back on a strawberry-flavored hot air balloon ride. So how you feel about Lost Horizons depends on how much it charms you. Make no mistake, the record is extremely endearing and flawlessly constructed-- it's just hard to love an album that has a dazzling surface and not much underneath.

-Chris Dahlen, February 6th, 2003