Morcheeba Returns With Skye Edwards To Draw Blood

Last week, I was shocked to discover that a new Morcheeba studio album had nearly dodged our radar, and even more surprised to learn that original vocalist Skye Edwards had returned to the band for the release, entitled Blood Like Lemonade.

When I read that Paul Godfrey called it the record they “should have made after [their 1998 breakthrough] Big Calm,” It occurred to me that the concept of a band “returning to their roots” ranks among the worn-out clichés I loathe the most. But I was a victim of my own snap judgments when the first listen didn’t grab me: I missed an ocean of subtleties trying so hard to hear those dancefloor / 90s alt-punk hacker movie soundtrack grooves that established Big Calm as a defining exhibition of the so-called trip-hop genre.

Blood Like Lemonade is easily Morcheeba’s most downtempo, brooding album to date, and the only dancing likely to be done to it is of the horizontal variety. It’s also one of their best. The continued refinement of Paul & Ross Godfrey’s songwriting abilities apparent through the band’s last two, more eclectic releases The Antidote and Dive Deep reaches an almost zen-like effortlessness.

I Am The Spring, for example, is simply Skye backed by a delicate acoustic guitar, no drums, no synth pads, no overdubs. Yet it’s every bit as beautiful and haunting as the more constructed as Over And Over, its Big Calm cousin. Her vocal melodies fill in all the colors, expressing so much more than on her early works with the band.

It’s hard to say how much this impressive comeback is attributable to off-season practice, but the Godfreys must get credit for bravely eschewing the expected big beats, thus giving their frontwoman a bigger sonic room to play in. It isn’t squandered. As much as I personally loved Daisy Martey’s contributions on The Antidote, Skye Edwards’ vocal work on Blood Like Lemonade is the most developed and masterful of any Morcheeba album to date. Even Though, Recipe For Disaster, and Easier Said Than Done are all great examples of this refined approach, effectively evoking deep emotions more than the usual fan-pleasing (yet fleeting) head nods and hip shakes. The title track is another, and all of these are sure to be every bit as, if not more listenable years down the road, likely holding up better than the band’s more datable past work.

There are a couple of instrumental deviations on the album; Mandala and Cut To The Bass, both following the album’s overall tone more or less; the latter has a quicker tempo but neither attempt to “balance” the ballads, opting rather to reinforce the experience by bridging distances between them.

While Self-Made Man falls just a note short of its attempt to wring poignancy from a repeated cliché (there’s no such thing as a self-made man…), Blood Like Lemonade closes strong with Beat Of The Drum, a determined slow song of affirmation, traveling on into the sunset.

Over the course of successive listens, it becomes clear that Paul Godfrey most certainly wasn’t trying to sell the new album as Big Calm II, but rather exactly what it proves to be: A step forward in evolution the band would have and should have taken then, if only they had been ready.