Opening with ambient sounds from “The Sea,” a well known and well-received track from their second album Big Calm, Morcheeba hit the packed crowd with a nod to the familiar, popular 1998 release. I remember the release of this album, and “The Sea” in particular. One of my grade school buddies phoned me, claiming that it [“The Sea”] had been in his head since birth and was on the radio. He couldn’t believe it, transmitted across the ocean from thousands of miles away, by a British trio: the two Godfrey brothers and a female vocalist named Skye. We fell in love with her voice, as did hundreds and thousands of others.
The already-roused congregation lifted when Skye, displaying a high fro-hawk and red-sequined cat suit with matching fringe “wings” affixed to her wrists by gold bangles (supposedly pieced together by her own hand), burst into the title track of their newest album, Blood Like Lemonade.
Hunting high and low to seek revenge
Brand new moral code, got made reluctant renegade
Leaving empty souls when he avenged
Evil spirits flowed, he drank the blood like lemonade
The lyrics yielded to her dark, dripping voice, and her ”not-so-sweet” rasp breathed past each note and rippled through the chorus, bubbling up, begging you to close your eyes. Skye briefly interrupted my acoustic indulgence to thank the crowd in her adorable East-Londoner accent, and chirp, “We would be middle-aged now if we planned on living to eighty!”
While melting into the crowd, I felt lucky to see Morcheeba reunited more than 12 years later, with Skye as the lead singer, and listen to a sound that still simmers with sultry hallucinogenic lyrics like “Even Though’s.”
Constant drifting space no fear by a pepper moon
Look at all the waves down here, did we peak too soon
All the deadly dreams we had that I can’t believe
The universal messages that we don’t receive
As the Godfrey brothers scratched and mixed, building hip-hop inspired funk layers to the base of every pop song, the fully loaded 9:30 Club rocked in unison, while the faint choruses fused and faded to the next. Morcheeba’s psychedelic blues riffs and Edwards’ full, oozing, sexy, soul made me so thankful for the reconciliation.
