Story: Ralph Greco, Jr.
Lemon Knife is the Chicago-based husband and wife duo of Mia Blixt-Shenan singing and playing guitar and husband John Retterer-Moore playing drums, and what they call the more ‘punkier’ vocals, From the jump here, on the loud and in your face, jumpy title track opening one realizes this duo know well exactly they are delivering.
And deliver it they do with style!
The nutty “Astronomer’s Regret” follows, mixing Blixt-Shenan’s strong and sometimes sweet warble against her husband’s nasty talking. Pretty much as loud as the opener, but not as distorted, this one has some fantastic rhyme to its wacky lyric. I like how the two lay back to let cymbals just ring in some places.
We get a picked electric guitar opening on “Krikwald in a Day,” and that vocal mix again of soft and then occasionally shouts. This one is the first taste of Lemon Knife mining a quieter sensibility, letting things flow forth with ease.
The flicking bass pop punk of “Chip On Your Shoulder Size of a Boulder,” is pretty much spot-on perfect. The sloppy drums come under just the vocals, then they break out into full-out punk; this is great splashy loud stuff that’s wonderfully all over the place.
A high-toned picked bass leads us through Lemon Knife trying to keep a lid on the tragedy of the love song “Extremely Bizarre Love Triangle.” Here’s another one that showcases this duo’s fine songwriting.
Retterer-Moore’s drum soloing gets us into the chunky, overdriven bass of “Meet Me in the Mountains” (he also gets another solo mid-way through). Here is yet another example of this band playing rather aggressively, one could surely say with punk sensibilities, but Blixt-Shenan’s fine voice lilting through a rather sweet melody on top of the concoction.
I love the heavy bass leading with the crazy drums at the end of this one.
“Escape Plan” ends Ignite with Retterer-Moore growling through the heavy hit, then again, Blixt-Shenan counters with her sweeter vocal. The music on this one never finds its place for me particularly;, still, it’s as cool as the rest of what we get from Lemon Knife on Ignite.
Find Lemon Knife’s below:
Official Website: lemonknife.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lemonknife
Instagram: @lemonknifeofficial
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2idkk1AQNbcJE4HPUrBUDC
Bandcamp: https://lemonknife.bandcamp.com/
Soundcloud: N/A
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@lemonknife2498
Artist Contact Email: lemonknifeband@gmail.com
Ralph Greco, Jr. is the devilishly clever nom de plume of professional writer/musician Ralph Greco who lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. He is also a podcast co-host, but as everyone has a podcast these days, this fact is of very little consequence.
Ralph can be reached by writing ralphiedawriter@gmail.com
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