2 August 1996
In summer 1996 ‘Lemon Tree’ by German band Fool’s Garden seemed to fill all available Irish radio airspace like an ever-expanding gas. To borrow its chorus: I wonder how, I wonder why. Was it the schlager whimsy dressed as then-trendy Britpop-adjacent larkiness? The all-ages blandness? Probably a bit of both. Considering how their American cousins Deep Blue Something’s astonishingly featureless ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’, like a less edgy Friends theme, was a hit at the same time, watered-down alt-rock was certainly a sound in demand, if ‘demand’ isn’t too fizzy a word to associate with this sonic orange squash. (‘Lemon Tree’ only reached no. 26 in the UK, though.)
The blandness could have seen it pass me by unnoticed, but what sticks is that cabaret whimsy: the sound effects, the oompah two-step beat—with a farting tuba sound just so I get the point—and the bloody lemon tree. Any bits I could like, such as Peter Freudenthaler’s yearning voice, the minor key verses, and occasional lyric fragments like “I’m driving too fast / I’m driving too far”, get swamped by it. The old Alan Partridge joke aside, there probably really are people who prefer Wings to The Beatles, and ‘Lemon Tree’ is for them.
