Release Date: Jun 7, 2010
Genre(s): Electronic, Trip-Hop, Electronica, Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Club/Dance, Downbeat
Record label: !K7
Music Critic Score
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A more literal return to form, Blood Like Lemonade builds on the familiar downtempo grooves that filled Morcheeba's 2008 effort Dive Deep, but this time with original vocalist Skye Edwards back in the fray. Right from the opening dusty, minor-keyboard chord, the album is instantly identifiable for fans as stony, late-night grooves combine with melodies that are both pop-minded and soul-spirited. All the organic elements that sit on top of the slow, rolling drum machines are back, as is the sinister underbelly of their early material, although here it's amped up a touch.
Morcheeba’s 2008 attempt to revisit the halcyon days of their mid-90s apex failed in one area only: Skye Edwards’ stunning voice was nowhere to be found. The Godfrey brothers, Paul and Ross, succeeded in fully recreating every other aspect of the band’s smoky trip-hop grooves, but without Edwards’ soulful voice, the songs on Deep Dive simply failed to resonate in the same way as previous efforts. On Blood Like Lemonade, the Godfreys waste no time in remedying that oversight.
Morcheeba may have continued to be in existence in some form since its formation in the mid-1990s, but its sound will almost certainly be forever associated with that decade. Before the Time-dubbed “Decade From Hell”, Morcheeba’s blend of lush, loungy trip-hop perfectly captured the carefree, decadent dot-com era that was the mid-‘90s. Even if that decade contained its share of wars and economic misery, it seemed far easier to evade those problems, and Morcheeba was the soundtrack of escape.