Longtime trip-hop purveyors Morcheeba have spent the last several years experimenting. Releasing two albums with a variety of vocalists, the Godfrey brothers decided to go back to the basics, reuniting with longtime female vocalist Skye Edwards for their seventh studio album, last year’s Blood Like Lemonade. It’s a return to the “old Morcheeba,” who broke forth during the mid-’90s, English trip-hop scene, with the soulful and sultry Skye Edwards back on vocals in a fresh “state of three o’clock in the morning.” Or more cheeba.
Spread across the globe, multi-instrumentalist Ross Godfrey was the glue that helped Morcheeba reconnect as he moved between his brother DJ Paul Godfrey’s house in France and Skye Edwards’ place in London to assemble the pieces that would become Blood Like Lemonade, the most hands-on record to date from Morcheeba.
“It was a true collaboration,” says Skye Edwards in the band’s A Brief History, which you can see when Morcheeba comes to Portland’s Roseland Theater on Friday, March 4th with their “close-knit band,” which even features Skye’s husband, Steve, on bass.
“We play a mixture of old and new songs,” says Ross. “We play a bunch of songs from the first couple of albums and about four or five songs from the new record. Any Morcheeba fan from any different period of Morcheeba that comes to the show should be pleased. There should be enough to satisfy everybody.”
Ross Godfrey spoke to OMN from his studio in Hollywood, Los Angeles, where he has lived for four years, although he spends most of time on the road and in London.
All three of you were recording from different places in the world during the creation of this album…
Yes and no. I spent a lot of time traveling in between LA, where I live, and London, where Skye was recording, and France, where my brother lives. I spent a lot of time going in between to link it all together. So yes, we did spend quite a lot of time in different places, but we did meet up a lot as well.
So you played the messenger role.
[Laughs] Well, yeah. I like traveling, and they probably exploited that fact. I spent nine months on the road last year, and then as soon as I got home my wife and I went traveling around India for a month, and I don’t know why I did that. I should’ve just gone home and sat on the couch and relaxed for a while. I guess I have itchy feet.
How’s it feel to have Skye back?
It’s really, really good, wonderful. It’s been a real pleasure playing with her again; we’ve had some great times. She’s such an amazing singer and she’s really good at writing. We spent a lot of time developing together so when we start writing together, it automatically fits. It was necessary for us to have some time apart because we’d driven each other a bit crazy, but it was really nice to get back together again. I just bumped into her on the street in London at the beginning of last year and we went to dinner and got drunk and talked about making a new record. And it happened very naturally. As soon as we started recording it just felt great.
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