Review of The Best of The Lemonheads - The Atlantic Years
by Paul Rees
From Q July 1998
This compilation signals the end of The Lemonheads' association with Atlantic. With no label and his band in a state of stasis, Evan Dando's talent may have finally burnt out. These 19 songs highlight both the degree to which he's squandered his gifts and the wretched effect his herculean drug intake had on them. Dando was pushing the self-destruct button from the minute he formed The Lemonheads as a punk band from the same fertile Boston scene that spawned Pixies. They first broke up in 1987, after a chaotic hometown gig where Dando insisted upon playing sections of Guns N'Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine during every song. But while Lemonheads line-ups remained fluid, Dando sharpened his songwriting skills on a triumvirate of albums for indie label Taang!. Atlantic picked up the band for 1990's patchy Lovey, which featured his first great song, Ride With Me, an acoustic version of which is included here. While his voice is indistinct, Dando has a flair for bruised melancholy that stands comparison with his chief inspirations, Gram Parsons and Alex Chilton. It's a fact re-emphasised by the acoustic versions tracks he recorded as B-sides, such as Into Your Arms and Down About It which round off this set. It's A Shame About Ray was Dando's most complete artistic statement. The highlights of that album - the wistful title track, the sparky power pop of Confetti, the punked-up cover of Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson - are the best of this one. It was downhill from there. 1993's Come On Feel The Lemonheads was allegedly recorded in a blizzard of cocaine and crack and sounded like it, Big Gay Heart and Great Big No being flimsy, throwaway country rockers. Dando at least retained his sense of fun on It's About Time, getting his famously celibate girlfriend/ex-bandmate Juliana Hatfield to sing backing vocals on a song he'd written about her. Three years on, the whimsical The Outdoor Type off Car Button Cloth was equally ingratiating. But as the knockabout It's All True and Hospital show, by then Dando was functioning on autopilot. Where he goes from here is anybody's guess.