Short Reviews [The Lemon Clocks - 2020 - "Time To Wake Up"]

2020 saw the release of the next album, with a slight change in that Stefan Johansson (drums, guitar, bass, keyboards) and Jeremy Morris (guitar, bass, drums, grand piano, mellotron, synthesizer, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, dulcimer, glockenspiel, E-Bow, percussion, vocals) played on all tracks while Oscar was just on four, plus Carlos Vigara (who is in The Seasongs with Oscar) and Dave Dietrich (who has played with Jeremy on multiple albums) were on two. A generous 19 songs on this release, with 16 co-written by Stefan and Jeremy, two by Jeremy and Oscar, and the final being a cover of “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James & The Shondells where Jeremy has added some new musical parts to make it nearly fifteen minutes long and a true epic! Yet again we are in the world of psychedelic power pop, but there are some garage influences here and there (meant in the traditional sense of the genre, not the modern) which gives this some nice bite to cut through the sugar. Some of the tracks have contain multiple guitars, and the introductory guitar progression on “Vampire” reminds me of a Seventies rock classic, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it is! I must be getting old, sometimes the databanks don’t respond like they used to. This was the fifth album, and by now the band knew exactly what they were doing, even though they were still recording in different countries, and there is clear direction. This is incredibly accessible, and anyone listening to this for the first time will quickly be sat there with a smile and grooving away. They know their audience, they know their material, they are conumate musicians, and somehow they keep putting out albums of very high quality indeed which are there to be enjoyed by anyone into this style of music.