Review of Baby I'm Bored by John Mulvey
From Dot Music 2003
Well, it's been a while. Some
seven years on from the last Lemonheads album, it's a fractionally mellower
Evan Dando who ambles back into the spotlight. Perhaps this time, the focus
will be less on his exotic rock'n'roll appetites, and more on the continuing
excellence of his music.
Perhaps. The trouble is, Dando's past looms large on 'Baby I'm Bored'. "All
my life, I thought I needed all the things I didn't need," he sighs on
'All My Life'. "You stayed awake for 14 days, and then you slept a week,"
he chides himself on the pointedly titled 'Why Do You Do This To Yourself?'.
For 'The Same Thing', the truth comes out: "I can't believe how far I
slid, but secretly I'm glad I did."
The gist, then, of 'Baby I'm Bored' is a kind of rueful reflection on the
excesses of Evan Dando. He was always a hedonist unusually free of self-pity,
one who took drugs out of a lust for life rather than as a means to escape
from it. And these 12 lovely songs reflect that: the madness remembered with
a wry smile instead of anything as melodramatic as regret.
It's a little more complicated than it seems, though. Dando has always had
the appearance of a singer-songwriter, but in The Lemonheads he was a champion
collaborator and appropriator. On 'Baby I'm Bored', too, his confessions are
penned, at least in part, by a host of other people. Two of the finest songs,
'Hard Drive' and 'All My Life', are written entirely by Ben Lee, who also
collaborates with Dando and his long-time songwriting accomplice Tom Morgan
on 'The Same Thing'. Lee is an interesting case: a young Australian singer,
now on the periphery of The Beastie Boys' circle in New York, who first came
to prominence when, aged 14, he wrote a song fantasising about what it would
be like to be Evan Dando. The innocent fan gets hired to articulate the mature
Dando's nostalgia: it's a irony that both must have taken much pleasure from.
'Baby I'm Bored' is the album Dando's fans hoped he would return with. Essentially,
it sounds like The Lemonheads grown up: fuzzy, skilfully-constructed indie-rock
with a gentle undertow of country. So Howe Gelb and Calexico figure amongst
the supporting cast, and Dando gets to exercise his Gram Parsons fixation
once again on 'Why Do You Do This To Yourself?'. He's also lucky to have survived
the '90s with his voice intact - that warm, deep and easy way he has with
a song is as beguiling as ever.
Maybe, too, he's lucky to have survived the '90s with his life intact. But
Evan Dando would never be so corny as to make a big deal of the fact. He took
drugs and made great records about it. Now he's stopped and has made a great
record about how he used to take drugs. A good deal, one suspects, all round.