Serendipity. At the point of being dropped by Atlantic after 1990’s Lovey sank without trace, Evan Dando had dissolved The Lemonheads and headed off to Australia for some thinking time. There he met Tom Morgan and Nic Dalton, wrote some songs and in the process laid the foundations for It’s A Shame About Ray, released just as grunge was spreading into the mainstream. Even then it took a throwaway cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson to push the band out into the light, but work it did, and Dando became an unlikely pin up.
If that was the happy ying, then came the yang. Almost immediately the suits were demanding a momentum-riding follow up, but the band arrived to record in an apocalyptic, post Rodney King LA. Dando himself promptly got lost in pharmaceuticals, there were fears for his voice and whether in fact a record would get made at all.
Come On Meet The Lemonheads given that context was a remarkable turnaround. In amongst the chaos the singer had taken his writing to a new level, weaving Byrds-esque melodies with country, psychedelia and punk-adjacent pop on the likes of Into Your Arms, The Great Big No, Down About It and Big Gay Heart. There was darkness too – the album’s most quotable line remains Style’s “Don’t wanna get stoned/But I don’t wanna not get stoned” – but then, as now, it’s almost impossible to hear another collection of songs nailing the era’s zeitgeist so perfectly.
Three decades on that core has lost non of it’s vigour and occasional weirdness, but the additional work underlines the suspicion that Dando was a far more intuitive musical scholar than many credited. The acoustic versions of album material are worthy enough, but it’s a fascinating choice of covers – The Flying Burrito Brothers, Victoria Williams, Ella Fitzgerald’s Ms. Otis Regrets – that push back against any thoughts of nihilistic grain. Wrong place, right time, out of your mind – Come On Feel The Lemonheads was the sound of a perfect storm on tape, one well worth getting soaked by again.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 