Album Review: Menace Beach - Lemon Memory

Recorded in a studio in Sheffield with Ross Orton whose previous credits include the likes of Artic Monkeys and MIA, the hotly tipped Menace Beach will be hoping that sophomore album Lemon Memory builds on the success of 2015’s Ratworld.
Kicking off with the barbed ‘Give Blood’, Lemon Memory features several bursts of grungy alt.rock – Menace Beach’s default stylistic setting. Unfortunately, it’s all a bit one-dimensional. Indeed, by the time we get to the plodding ‘Can’t Get A Haircut’, you feel like the group are adrift in their own echo chamber.
The album does manage to shake itself into life by the mid-point, courtesy of the pysch-tinged ‘Owl’ and the atmospheric ‘Suck It Out’, with both tunes showcasing Liza Violet’s hugely impressive vocals. Within an album as grungy and heavy as this, Violet’s velvety vocals are a true delight.
Still, it’s not enough to turn this into a meisterwerk. There’s the makings of a great album in here somewhere, but the band’s abundant potential is frustratingly unrealised.

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