'75 aka Stay With You

permalink         categories: music · repeat-1 song of the day         originally posted: 2005-04-06 09:13:07

Lemon Jelly has finally come out with a new album! It's called '64-'95, and it's... uneven, which is something new for them.

But then there's a lot of new territory here. The concept behind the album was to build on samples from old records—from the years 1964 to 1995, hence the name. On first listen, much of the album strays from the classic Lemon Jelly "sound"; that uniformity of style that made their first two albums as close in timbre as Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene and Equinox. And, unfortunately, it's the parts that do venture into new territory that didn't grab me overly so.

But the bits that sound like good ol' Lemon Jelly are great. One song in particular shines out, which brings us to our repeat-1 Song Of The Day: '75 aka Stay With You, featuring a bit of vocals sampled from Gallagher & Lyle's I Wanna Stay With You. Oh! my, this song is exactly why I tell everybody about Lemon Jelly. It's six minutes of silky-smooth, sugary-sweet, soothingly repetitive, pure techno gold. They do a great job teasing the most listenability out of that one vocal sample. I like how it makes you wait for the whole phrase, dangling it in front of you temptingly, then snatching it away. As if to say "Patience, dear listener! All will be revealed in time."

I'll give the rest of the album plenty of additional listens. I like a sizeable portion of Lemon Jelly's work, and I have every expectation that I'll find some new favorites here. The opener ('88 aka Come Down On Me) was crunchy and nice, and I quite like their samples of Shatner reading poetry for '64 aka Go. But I can already tell you '75 aka Stay With You is gonna stay with me for the rest of the week.

And that's my market-droid sales pitch for the week.