Lemon Jelly: grand setting for a spectacle

This splendid courtyard is once a year turned into a gigging place and it is a very special occasion. The surrounding architecture is stunning and the cobbled yard offers plenty of vantage points for all 3 thousand lucky souls. The lot got treated to something special under the gun-grey skies that spared us. Lemon Jelly served a storming show, as a prelude to a new album later in the year.

The climate didn’t go unmentioned from the stage and the comment was that it could have been ‘Nice Weather For The Ducks’, after blasting the tune. Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen have an inordinate collection of gear onstage and they are glad to use it. Switching constantly from one to the other instrument, they offer an incredible array of sounds.

It is easy to class this Brit act - although they claimed to be based in Cayman Islands as these buildings are occupied by Inland Revenue - as electro-pop but there is a much wider vocabulary they speak. There are elements of rock, funk, experimental, club and avant-looking... (Sorry, lost it after my second 2-pint ‘Q-saving’ beer!] At times they sound like Suicide, at others Kraut-poppy, at another - punky… One song is entitled ‘The Shouty Track’.

The audience, sadly, underperformed and there were only pockets that were really getting off on it. The rest were there, it appeared to this trained observer, with an attitude of - entertain us! The Jelly boys certainly did it with a spectacle that used the building behind as a projection screen to show them on the way to catching up with what Jean Michelle Jarre and Pink Floyd used to do. [Yep, that impressive.]

Songs such as ‘Spacewalk‘, ‘In The Bath’ and ‘Nice Weather For The Ducks’ [the loudest cheer of the night!] were mixed with eight new songs; one rare guest was Terri Walker on ‘Make Things Right’… The evening could have been much better if the ‘warm-up’ act weren’t Phill Jupitus. Funny? Tedious more like it because if the man had a head-on with humour, he would ask for an ID.

A perfect (almost) union of men and machines. Almost? Well, “Do not fear perfection: you will never achieve it,” decreed Salvador Dali.
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News extract:

Lemon Jelly's new album ‘64-95’ is based on songs from 1964-95; the 10 songs are based around sampes of the duo’s favourite tracks in the manner of ’Soft’ which sampled Chicago.

Artists sampled include Atlantic Ocean, Gallagher & Lyle and Jon Rowles. Tracks are: ’It Was’, ’Come Down On Me’, ‘Don’t Stop Now’, ‘Make This Right’, ‘The Shouty Track’, ‘Stay With You’, ‘The Slow Train’, ‘A Man Like Me’ and ‘Go’.