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 lemon jelly: sweet or sour?
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Blissed out pop or branded pap? Whose side are you on? Sweet: Joy in music often gets a bad rap. Damned by its association with sugar-coated, inauthentic pop fluff, most “artists” find their muse in the miserable, the helpless or the angry. Not Lemon Jelly: in seeking to cultivate the happy and the life-affirming, Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen craft sonic nuggets of feelgood bonhomie. That’s not to say their easy-on-the-ear electronica is vacuous aural wallpaper, as their detractors would have it. Far from it. Their compelling and strangely hypnotic grooves are suffused with wit and emotion aplenty. Nowhere is this better exemplified than on their third album, 64-95. Each of the nine tracks started life as a sample (culled from tracks released between 1964 and 1995). Don’t Stop Now is a slow-burning ambient thriller and The Shouty Track is a malevolent floor-filler, while Come Down On Me is blissful poptronica. Music is meant to convey the whole gamut of the human condition: smiling is a part of that. Lemon Jelly make you smile. (4) Jim ButlerSour: The problem with Lemon Jelly is that they come across as designers not artists. It’s audio designed to appeal to a market, to fit into a lifestyle, to serve a purpose. Lemon Jelly is a brand, all the facets of which are carefully managed to create “brand loyalty” among twenty/thirtysomething post-ravers. The lovely graphics, the lovely videos, the lovely light shows, the soulless music. The tracks are carefully assembled from tried and tested ingredients (ask Groove Armada, Basement Jaxx, Chemical Bothers and Massive Attack) to cause remarks at dinner parties, and to allow you to show off the soundsystem in your new 4x4. The crisp breakbeats, the quirky samples, the floaty melodies. It’s so inoffensive it’s offensive. Like an organic, vacuum-packed, gluten-free cereal bar. Seems like “the right choice” but leaves you feeling empty and gagging for a bacon sandwich. (2) Alastair Lee  Lemonjelly.ky (2000), Lost Horizons (2002) and the latest release '64-'95 Jim’s Reply: Alastair, without wanting to be personal, the problem is not with Lemon Jelly, the problem is with you. To criticize Lemon Jelly for appealing to a certain market or demographic is short-sighted. All bands appeal to a certain cross-section of the populace. All bands are brands to a certain degree. Slag their music off if you must - that’s your prerogative - but you can hardly blame them for how music has become marketed and packaged. After all, the music industry has been turning rebellion into money for years now. And as for your bacon sarnie quip, you’re right, nothing beats a good bacon sandwich. But man (and woman) cannot live on bacon sandwiches alone. Alastair’s Reply: Jim, if Lemon Jelly make you smile, do you also get a buzz from McDonald’s employees saying, “Have a nice day”. The problem is that it’s insincere, it’s fake, it’s just corporate policy. There are plenty of musicians out there spreading genuine love. This is audio Prozac in comparison. There’s nothing wrong with a band becoming a brand, we all have to make a living after all, but it should be secondary to the artistic endeavour. It shouldn’t actually become the artistic endeavour itself. And true, you cannot live on bacon sandwiches alone – you need some real nutrients too. But these rarely come in shiny packages. Lemon Jelly - 64-95, out now on XL/Impotent Fury.
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