don't get lemon – Queen City Sounds and Art

don’t get lemon’s “Paid Holiday” is Like a Synth Pop Theme Song For a Jared Hess Comedy

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“Paid Holiday” doesn’t strike one immediately as an offbeat song but not many songs by don’t get lemon do. The music video shows a man dressed like a character from a movie set in the Napoleon Dynamite universe and looking like it’s shot on Super-8. It fits the song about a guy living with delusions of low rent grandeur and constantly living a life of “adventure” unattached to obligations and somehow skating by on fantasies of a nomadic “lifestyle” thinking he’s living the high life on the cheap, going on until the wheels come off and dreaming of that life of being his own man with no expectations for himself than dubious luxury. It’s a way of being in which you have to tell yourself it’s what you want even if it’s ultimately unsustainable. And yet the song has a beautifully fuzzy melody and lends the depicted a soundtrack to his dreams of freedom and dignity. It’s an expansive synth pop song that like certain Wes Anderson movies the style brings a sense of romance to the unromantic and the contrast between the images of the video, the lyrics and the music is what sets the song apart from most other synth pop. Watch the video for “Paid Holiday” on YouTube and follow don’t get lemon at the links below.

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“Pop Star Salvation” is don’t get lemon’s Somber Synth Pop Critique of the Expected Clout Chasing in the Arts

“Pop Star Salvation” is the concluding track of don’t get lemon’s new album Have Some Shame and ends the lushly melancholic album on a particularly thoughtful and somber note. As the title to the album suggests many of the songs within explore themes of aspiration and self-awareness, of romanticized melodramatic ego assertion and the limitations that sort of fake it until you make it spirit places on one’s actual achievements. The band this time around masterfully layers saturated synth, processional arrangements and soulful vocals on a foundation of elegantly textural bass rhythms. This song and its knowing observations on the illusion of the rewards of chasing clout as part of the whole game of being in a band or in any other creative endeavor is one of the weightier of synth pop songs in recent years and at the same time has emotional resonances reminiscent of the defiantly resigned tones of Protomartyr circa Under Cover of Official Right (2014). Listen to “Pop Star Salvation” on Spotify and follow don’t get lemon at the links below. Have Some Shame released on April 24, 2024 via á La Carte Records for streaming, digital download and limited edition vinyl.

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“Blow-Up” is don’t get lemon’s Jubilant Synth Pop Collage of Dreamlike Bliss and Personal Darkness

The jaunty rhythm and bright synth accents on don’t get lemon’s synth pop song “Blow-Up” recalls the subversive pairing of dark themes with buoyant compositions that were a hallmark of some of the better 80s post-punk and New Wave. The electronic flute sound that introduces the song before the slightly distorted bass line anchors bursts of expansive melodic pulses and soulful and strong yet introspective vocals takes over is almost ironic in context but it all balances out the songwriting so that lines like “Anything within me will blow-up/Is this the death you’re dreaming of” can hit with an anthemic force. The imagery of the song suggests the visual sense of dreams before the underlying nightmare asserts itself, a testament to the cut-up method used to assemble the lyrics so that they can tap into a subconscious process and thus evade more straightforward, logical analysis and work as poetry that can ride that wave of irresistible yet moody melody and jubilant rhythm into your mind and strike with an unexpected poignancy. In that way it’s reminiscent of how XTC transitioned from well-crafted post-punk pop to a more streamlined, perfect pop songcraft that didn’t skimp on the possibilities of powerful emotional expression built into that format. Apparently the song shares its name with Michaeangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film and its own foreground of swinging London and its hedonism with its own underlying darkness and this layered cultural reference and methodology in songwriting is what makes this song as well as much of don’t get lemon’s music much more than simply synth pop or post-punk or simple genre jamming.

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The Wistful and Melancholic Tones of don’t get lemon’s “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” is the Sound of Accepting a Dim Future That Hopefully Never Quite Arrives

don’t get lemon, photo by Anthony Flores

The second single from don’t get lemon’s album Hyper Hollow Heaven (out March 26, 2022 on à La Carte Records) has the rather dire title “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” and the lyrics hit with the resigned nihilism born of an accurate assessment of where human civilization is trending. But the music is a special kind of lush, synth pop like bedroom production style Roxy Music or Crush-period Abe Vigoda. In the video Austin Curtis, the band’s singer, seems to party privately in the few creature comforts available in late capitalism before the utter collapse: oddly plentiful, Asian grocery items that seem like a cruel and surreal joke, karaoke night lighting and equipment, late night Vegas lounge aesthetic. This while the audio equivalent of VHS video fidelity and visuals to match has Curtis singing about basically being ready for the end of the world or at least the world as we know it and knowing that it’s kind of too late to do anything to stop it. One imagines if synth pop had existed in the fourth century Roman empire it would take on a tone like this between climate change, widespread political corruption and fiscal malfeasance, deep social divisions, international strife, pandemics and other crises that ended up rendering the most powerful economic and political entity the world had ever seen unable to rally to address the many built in ills that were contributing to its downfall. Many perceptive people had to have seen it coming and had there been a popular art form that survived we might have seen the ancient equivalent of a song like this born out of similar struggles, pressures and a sense that it’s all worse than a recession or political partisanship gone wild. This band personalizes the ambient anxiety of the time with a soothing song that commiserates with us a downer mood. But contained within it is the seed that we could turn this whole thing at least partly around but do you see anyone overthrowing the oligarchic power and economic structure in the next five to twenty years? Seems unlikely so while perhaps hoping and working for the best may as well enjoy some of the small joys of life before it’s completely over. Watch the video for “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” on YouTube and connect with don’t get lemon at the links below.