The Books - The Lemon Of Pink (Album Review)

 

(2003)

My copy: 2016 remastered reissue on yellow vinyl with pink splatter by Temporary Residence Limited.

Thought For Food is a tough act to follow - the album is so conceptually fresh that expansion is difficult to anticipate. And so Paul De Long and Nick Zammuto followed their instincts with The Lemon Of Pink: another odd foray into folk-meets-glitch-pop where familiar acoustic sounds are battered and fragmented across time-skipping musical portals. 

Though this new offering does not enter some bold, new territory, it does widen its bank of human samples - now more disjointed and chaotic than ever. “The Lemon Of Pink Pt. 1” is more erratic in its vocal bombardments, but much more peaceful in between these blossoming fragments of sound. Warm piano opens the record until cello and banjo whisk the composition in humble anxiety - the underlying chord changes offering warmth in spite of the electronics flipping about in some twisted rendition of lounge jazz. “Tokyo” stutters and spasms with international voices, the acoustic accompaniments towing a line between Boards Of Canada and alien recreations of folk music. Then the atmosphere is dialed back slightly with muted pads on “S Is For Evrysing,” pitting peaceful keys against malicious bass growls.

The Lemon Of Pink stumbles slightly in melody, opting for more ambitious plunderphonic-adjacent adventures through ever-tense scale-work over the occasionally poppy hooks of their debut. “There Is No There” showcases their taste for cataloging set pieces - moments in time captured and rearranged into new forms through a sort of musical time dilation. “Take Time” is probably their catchiest tune here, embracing repetition in a rhythmically scrolling structure accented by primal, boney percussion. Even as the duo expands further into digital chaos, their palette remains distinctly human and natural - posing some potential commentary on technology and its rapidly growing importance in everyday life. 

The air is mysterious and vaguely bluesy on “Don’t Even Sing About It,” perhaps chronicling their first true brush with sinister undertones - made even more convincing with its gritty vocal sample. The clever, dawning beams of synth on “The Future, Wouldn’t That Be Nice” play a patient game between eruptions of tactile rhythm while “A True Story Of A Story Of True Love” builds a steady flood of sounds, like a string of neurons firing more and more rapidly through a digital filter. The rhythmic movements of “The Right Ain’t Shit” skulk and dodge uncannily with staccato pokes of strings, as a ringing piano carries the weight of the arrangement. 

Bonus closer “PS” is a good representation for their effort on The Lemon Of Pink: a series of disconnected voices, stripped of context, stumbling and failing to find communicable ground. And yet, these voices are laughing - laughing nervously, but laughing nonetheless. The Books tap into some primordial human emotion relating to both tension and elation, providing a natural high that hums and buzzes like a machine built to interpret opposite sides of the musical lexicon. Their immaculate sense of humor is diminished here, and immediately gratifying melodies are harder to identify, but The Lemon Of Pink still stands as a cerebral message that outweighs the necessity for conventional composing.