The Daily Spin, August 30
Lemon Demon | Spirit Phone
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
Album: Spirit Phone (2016)
Artist: Lemon Demon
Link:
His first release as Lemon Demon in eight years, Spirit Phone comes forward in an attempt to be one of Neil Cicierega’s finest works under this alias, but instead leaves having pushed nearly two hours of oddly bland material into the world.
If Cicierega took himself a little more seriously, I think there’d be a lot to love - and undeniably, this is some strong instrumentation when it doesn’t get messed with. Unfortunately, that’s essentially the trademark style of Lemon Demon, so you get these wonderful one-minute interludes stamped together with three minutes of brutal cacophony.
Too frequently, the working formula is stamped out for something that actively makes me want to walk away from the album entirely, music that feels like a bull let run amok in a shop selling all sorts of instruments, cacophony in the way that only sits unpleasantly in the pit of one's' stomach.
This album, more than any other, reminds me of the saying that less is more - by trying to do absolutely everything, we’re left with nothing but a splattered shell, the remnants of the heart and soul of this music.
Rating: 5.0/10
Best Tracks: No Eyed Girl
Worst Tracks: Spiral of Ants