Picture this: it’s a weekday morning. Leonard the lemon cracks his eyes open to find himself sprawled beside a spilled bottle of Jäger and a couple of lines of cocaine.
This is Steve Umculo’s latest brainchild, “Lemonade Stand”: a bittersweet love story between two dysfunctional lemons (well, Leonard is the dysfunctional one, really) and a lemonade stand. Despite its easy, sun-soaked DIY aesthetic, it took about 5 months to put together – largely due to Umculo’s lockdown-fuelled procrastination, which we’re all admittedly guilty of.
It comes along with a summery, chiming, indie love song. The sort of thing you might peg for a rom-com soundtrack – for the opening credit montage. Silky vocals and breezy lyricism even cheekily pins down his target market (“Don’t panic, it’s organic […] bespoke and artisanal.”)
It’s an unexpectedly nuanced release, packaged in a cheerful (though progressively and unexpectedly morbid) visual. It’s a lockdown production gone quite right, and you’ve got to give Umculo credit for credible creativity here. I’ve never been more invested in two lemons.
