The Akron-based “Lemon friends” have a new album coming soon on London’s Last Resort.

In Akron, Ohio, four friends get together every Tuesday with gas station snacks and various instruments to see where the night takes them. They call themselves Lemon Quartet and although the project is relatively new, the group’s members have been making music together in various huddles and formations for the better part of two decades. While previous iterations can be loosely linked to Ohio’s vibrant late ’90s and early ’00s DIY rock scene that birthed The National, Guided by Voices, and The Black Keys, the music they create now is something entirely new – seemingly unbothered by scenes or time.

Lemon Quartet’s debut album Crestless arrived over three year’s ago on independent UK label Last Resort and was a big favorite here at In Sheep’s Clothing HQ. Hazy, atmospheric, and lush with nostalgia-inducing melodies, the album is as soothing as it is subtly complex with Fender Rhodes, upright bass, vibraphone, guitar, and saxophone meeting delicate drum work, subtle electronic production, and, of course, G.S. Schray’s signature EWI. The album has remained in rotation ever since its release, and we’ve been patiently awaiting the group’s next release…

Well – we’re happy to share that the wait is now over! Lemon Quartet’s next album Artsfest will be released on September 15th via (you guessed it) Last Resort. Label founder Tom Cathcart has graciously allowed us to premiere the music video for the debut single “Hyper for Love.” Made by Gabriel Schray himself, the video captures a wonderful evening stillness surrounding a clay ball that slowly morphs into something much more… Check it below!

Read the liner notes for Lemon Quartet’s Artsfest:

Memory is malleable. The day you met the person you love, what color shirt was she wearing? At precisely what angle did the sunlight strike his face? How exactly did they glow? These little details are precious, but the strange thing is, the more you cherish them, the more they change. Each recollection is another potential touch point where stories can shift—each replay degrades the truth. Reality’s rough edges smooth, with time. Objectivity is a myth: cameras and recording devices all contort image and sound. There’s no way to know exactly how things were. And yet we still tell the stories, to try to capture how things felt, even though the truth is always slipping through our fingers.

Lemon Quartet’s second album Arts Fest seems to unconsciously circle this thematic territory. Full of loose, yet lush repetition, it seems to function like memory—each dizzy melody recalling and rewriting what came before, subtly shaping each piece as time passes. Not that they seem especially concerned with the passage of time anyway. They space out, they work in the realm of feelings, scribbling melodious abstractions that feel familiar. Rich with compassion, harmony, and gestures toward ecstatic—if not objective—truth, it’s full of the sort of pieces that demand you return to them, but sound a bit different each time, new details overtaking familiar comforts. Are you hearing them for the first time? Or just for the first time in a long time? Either way, drift away, and try to remember…

Revisit our “Labels We Love” feature on Last Resort: https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/labels-we-love-last-resort-uk/