About ten years ago Morcheeba’s Big Calm was everywhere. Seemingly at every party, on every radio station, in every pub and bar across the world. It was unstoppable.
Lumped in with the whole tip hop sound of Bristol, despite being very London the beauty of Big Calm hinged on the combination of the minimalist, down tempo music of brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey and Skye Edwards’s sad, bitter sweet vocals.
The album Fragments of Freedom followed, but despite selling well it failed to recreate Big Calm’s blend of trip hop and pop and was a critical flop. By 2002 the brothers had lost the plot completely and sacked Edwards. It proved to be musical suicide as they spent the next eight years drifting aimlessly, putting out an album here or there, trying out different singers and even a rubbish folk pop sound on 2005’s The Antidote.
It’s taken the brothers a while, but somehow they have realised that without Edwards they are nothing. Calls were made, drinks were bought and now Edwards is back for what is undoubtedly their best album in years, Blood Like Lemonade, which unashamedly follows a back to basics approach and successfully recreates the sound of Big Calm.
Edwards soft, sad vocals with slick trip hoppish production are once again there. But let’s not go overboard, listening to Blood Like Lemonade is like meeting an old friend again. We’ve grown older and there’s a bond there but we have less in common now and conversation drifts into nostalgia rather than the here and now.
Edwards vocals carry the album, as it should be with Morcheeba and there are some beautiful tracks, but some songs sound tired in places. The lyrics are particularly weak and at times Edwards sound like she really doesn’t want to be there. While Big Calm was a masterclass in consistency Blood Like Lemonade is too piecemeal.
Among the best though are the single ‘Even Though’. Edwards sings it like a lullaby over trip hop beats and acoustic guitar. In a word, lovely. The album’s title track is another standout, oozing the laid back approach of Big Calm.
But others such as the instrumental ‘Mandala’ are pretty weak, ironically rushed sounding for such a measured sounding band. The joke of constantly referencing clichés in ‘Self Made Man’, also falls flat.
Its nice to meet an old friend like the Big Calm era Morcheeba again. Its not completely the same, but it’ll do for now.
6.5/10
by Joe Lepper, June 2010
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