Artist: Lemmus Lemmus
Album: Chameleon Mood Swing
Released: 2004
Naked Lemming Records (NKLM CD 1001)
Genre: Progressive Rock, Neo-Psychedelia
Review:
On Chameleon Mood Swing, Lemmus Lemmus sound uncannily like early Pink Floyd, with heavy echoes of both Floyd's Syd Barrett phase and the several-years-after-Syd-left era. There are similarly spooky keyboard textures in particular (on both Hammond organs and Mellotrons), along with glissando guitar lines, filtered vocals, folky strummed acoustic guitar, doomy drum rolls, eerie disembodied vocals, and miscellaneous strange sucked-into-vacuum effects. It all adds up to a sense of floating through space, which of course was the sensation evoked by many an early Pink Floyd recording. Would this have existed if Pink Floyd hadn't? Almost certainly not, but that doesn't mean this isn't enjoyable on its own terms, if for nothing more than the sonic pleasure of hearing this early British psychedelic style executed so well (entirely without synthesizers, digital keyboards, modules, or samplers, as the credits make a point of noting). Unlike much stuff so grounded in the past, it's not bereft of good tunes either, with pleasing melancholy chord progressions motoring songs like "Better Off With You." There's an even hazier lyrical focus than there was in vintage Pink Floyd, the vocals often sounding like dissolving clouds over the horizon, with the female guest lead singing of Elia Semama on "Better Off With You -- Part 2" providing a welcome change of pace. One could even go as far as to say that fans of the early Pink Floyd sound might be better off with this than with whatever new recordings Pink Floyd themselves might come up with in the wake of this 2004 release. (Richie Unterberger, AMG)
Track List:
1. Better Off With You
2. Ain't Got No Time
3. Hands Of Time
4. Chameleon Mood Swing
5. Suddenly Sunday
6. Bulldogs & Sneakers
7. I'll Be The Same
8. Better Off With You, Part 2
9. Silly Princess
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