There’s music in every corner of Lillie Lemon’s new Seaside dwelling, which she shares with her collaborator and fellow music savant Eric Wobbles. One of the rooms is more like a home laboratory of sound than a bedroom: keyboards, synths, amps, miles of speaker cord and a shiny white digital theremin crowd in with purpose and precision.
Usually performance gear clutters the living room, but was moved to Lemon’s van in preparation for a gig. A box of “props” on the floor awaits a video shoot. Among the artifacts: a modified Buck Rogers toy handgun and wearable windmill blades. The video, featuring a pair of pilots rebuilding their plane after a crash, is for “Stardust,” an epic and cataclysmic tune off Lemon’s forthcoming record brak (pronounced break).
The Wisconsin native’s introspective full-length debut is an 11-track journey that is sad – tragic, even – and beautiful. In the opener “Ode to the Best Ones” uptempo, mid-’80s pop disguises a theme of heartache and loss, which sets the album’s recurring motif into action.
“Everyone has known heartbreak,” Lemon says.
While /brak/ could be considered a downer conceptually, it’s invigorating musically and spiritually. The haunting “Give Up the Ghost” is driven by a fresh industrial backbeat – a Wobbles’ original – that stands up to Nine Inch Nails at their Pretty Hate Machine-best. Just when you were eager to hear Lemon’s voice without any electronic smoke and mirrors, the stripped down tearjerker “Still My Heart” refreshingly opens with just Lemon’s vocals and piano. And as far as hooks go, “Harrow Driver” delivers one so good, you think you’ve heard it before. The words are also strong, yet non-specific enough to empathize with: “We both feel the fear of falling.”
“Partner” songs add depth with a story song delivered from a female perspective followed by another song relaying the same tale from a male point of view.
In April, Lemon and Wobbles are heading out on their longest and first semi-countrywide tour, which lasts 18 days and hits everywhere from Salt Lake City and Denver to Des Moines and Lemon’s beloved alma mater, Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
LILLIE LEMON CD Release (Valley Soul opens) 7pm Saturday, Feb. 28. Monterey Church, 401 Alvarado St., Monterey. $10; $25/VIP (special seating at the pre-party and door prizes). www.facebook.com/lillielemonmusic
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