Lemon Jelly - '64-'95

Lemon Jelly decided to release their last album in a DVD with all their songs animated, with quite haunting results. Do you remember the excellent clip for "Nice weather for ducks"? This is a bit similar, though simpler and a bit on the minimal side. Indeed, most are kind of slideshows, but let me explain track by track: "Come down on me" is the weakest video, a kind of Winamp animation destroyed by two female dancers in a horrible aesthetic; "Only time" shows a chain work of dreams in an animation that could be a bit more developed; "Don't stop now" is a show of geometric shapes raising and lowing towers with the rhythm of the song; "Make things right" - the first really good one - is another slideshow through a colored land in a black landscape, which reminds those kind of pictures you did as a child; "The shouty track" is the funniest video, heavy metal humanoids surrended by dirt and violence; "Stay with you" is at the same time the most beautiful song and video, multicolored waves creating shapes that dance in that hippy sea, like dolphins, ballerinas, tigers, stars....; "Slow train" is quite interesting for the minimal side of it: two or three colors, you can't really see the landscape through the trains are travelling...;"A man like me" is a continous homage to videogames, and the last slideshow, "Go", is quite arty, with two layers of moving pictures of grass, shores or contamination.

And, I don't know exactly why, this at first uneven work has become my favourite album of 2005. Really recommended. My nephews become hypnotized with this, and it's easy to know why.

The third album from Lemon Jelly, '64-'95, has some of the high points that made their collection of EPs a standout, but it's also rather uneven. The rock elements of "'88 a.k.a. Come Down On Me" seem a bit overblown, but it's quickly remedied by the calm folk-funk of "'68 a.k.a. Only Time." "'93 a.k.a. Don't Stop Now" reminds me a bit of Josh Wink's early acid work but without the tweaking that made it interesting; instead, the track meanders a bit aimlessly. "'95 a.k.a. Make Things Right" gets things back on the right path, but "'79 a.k.a. The Shouty Track" takes another wrong turn. The housier rhythms and catchy groove of "'75 a.k.a. Stay With You" make it a definite high-point. And "'76 a.k.a. The Slow Train" breaks the "good track, bad track" streak with a track that stands up pretty well, and "'90 a.k.a. A Man Like Me" keeps up the winning streak. Can I, with good conscience, recommend an album where about half the tracks are brilliant and the other half are dire? Sure, if the highs are high enough, and with '64-'93, it's high enough. But just barely.