Review of Lemonheads live at Subterania in London By Andrew Perry

From Select December 1992

“Huh?” Evan Dando gazes out from under his shaggy long mane with a smile that’s utterly blank. It’s hard to imagine this goofy, stoned-looking hulk achieving anything with his life, let alone the five Lemonheads LPs which have slowly eased away from thrash origins towards ’92’s ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’ – 12 exquisite songs of soft melodic grace.

In the past, Lemonheads shows have been hectic, but now the eternal sloth Dando has mellowed out, allowing bassist Nic Dalton to harmonise and Evan’s emotive pop voice to shine through. Some old punky numbers are wheeled out, like ‘Glad I Don’t Know’, which attracts a stagediver. Even the nasty bits are so nice you want to commit an axe murder, but the tunes chill you off the idea. Yet it’s bizarre to think that Lemonheads are best known for their covers. They’ve just done Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Mrs Robinson’, but tonight Evan does a heart-stopping solo encore of Abba’s ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’. It melts into what has gone before, as if this song were also his own, and you sense he’s but a breath away from fulfilling his dopey pin-up potential.

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