Review of Baby I'm Bored
From fasterlouder.com.au February 2004
Like fellow survivor, Courtney
Love, the legacy of Evan Dando’s moment in the NME-cast sun may just
prove to be too much of a hindrance to his career to be able to bare. Love’s
recent album was a tidy piece of rock’n’roll by anyone’s
standards: the only problem being that no one has been brave enough to admit
to liking it (lest they seem to be supporting the woman herself).
During Seattle’s five minutes Boston was always regarded as the day
care centre. Prom couple Juliana Hatfield and Dando were seen to be too virginal,
too poofy (well, that’s what they would have yelled across the courtyard
at my high school) for a nation of pick-up truck drivers. And sure, Dando
did sell his soul for rock’n’roll fame, no one can doubt that.
‘Forgetting’ to wear a shirt in nearly every photo-shoot of the
time may seem a bit too much of a Faustian bargain for the De La Roche’s
and Strummer’s of this world, but given the option of free sex and drugs
on tap, most mere mortals would have done the same. He didn’t scream
and howl like Seattle, and (worse) he did that ‘Mrs Robinson’
song, too. A cover version from the underground, for fuck sake? Pussy. What
I am taking a typically long time to explain, see, is that Dando (like Courtney)
is his own worst enemy. He played the game. And now he has to deal with the
fact that the people who laughed at him back then (by now hopefully mature
adults, but you never can tell) may not give him a chance this time around.
For the record, I think history will allow him to be one of the few genuine
talents of the past decade, but only once the dust has settled from the flannelette
and the baseball caps. Huh? What is this: a Rorschach test? What about the
album?
Baby I’m Bored is Dando’s first real outing in eight years, after
emerging from one hell of a lost weekend. He dipped his toes in a little while
back with a live set, ‘a best of’ in all but name, that was book-ended
with a slightly disappointing (though well intentioned) EP, Griffith Sunset.
Eagerly pawing the disc, what strikes you first are the song writing credits,
nearly all co-written by, or kindly gifted to, Dando. Has his well run dry?
Or is it like old drinking buddy Everett True so fortuitously wrote all those
years ago: “Evan always did have a way with other people’s words
and thoughts”. I guess it’s this odd hang up we have with indie
rock stars having to write all their own material. Despite the fact that a
quick history lesson will show that The Lemonheads always did rely on songs
like ‘Luka’, ‘Brass Buttons’ and, hell, even ‘Amazing
Grace’ to lighten up their set. Oh, and hey, Patti Smith is most famous
for her version of a Them track, if you wanna bitch and moan that I’m
being biased.
Baby I’m Bored is not about fun, though. It might just be – in
the end – about reflection. With the charm that Gram Parsons had (and
it’s not the first nor the last time that someone will mention both
in the same sentence) of making personal tragedy seem a beautiful life endeavour,
Dando lays it out for us. “All my life I thought I’d needed all
the things I didn’t need at all”, he swoons in the album’s
finest moment. And even more telling, “Another joke at my expense, I
can’t believe where the time went”. In an album of smooth surfaces,
these last two lines stick out by virtue of their sparse AA angle. The single
finest thing Dando may have recorded in at least a decade.
This album is quite obviously not hip enough for 2004. I’m no genius
but even I can see that. It is too polite and romantic. You can’t imagine
an ad for it on TV, nor can you imagine it soundtracking a montage of sports
highlights. The White Stripes are the biggest Band right about now (capitalisation
indicates we are referring to bands on Dando’s side of the economic
ballpark), I think we would have to agree. A band who sound exactly like Chuck
Berry’s version of ‘Maybelline’ recorded nigh on fifty years
ago (go figure! them crazy New Sounds from Detroit, eh?). Baby I’m Bored
is just as derivative, hell yeah, that’s not by quibble. It’s
just that we have to look ‘only’ thirty years behind our shoulders
on this occasion.
Hence, Dando’s finest forty minutes are destined to become one of our
lost classics – for at least another twenty years, by my count. And
then, Mojo (or it’s online equivalent) will cast a binary eye backward
and look with fondness upon the giddy days of The Lemonheads. Some sage critic
will mock the success of It’s A Shame About Ray (fine fine record though
it was, it just seems a bit flat these days) while wondering what strange
society dared ignore Baby I’m Bored, with it’s bath tub full of
sinking human emotions.
Well, buddy, if you’re trawling the web doing your research on your
piece, lemme tell you loud enough – the dumb fuckers are buying Evanescence
and Incubus. Equally true as this may be is the fact that you can expect to
see this album in second hand record stores all over your town, for the blind
are also deaf. When you see it, think again. Just stop and calm down and –
I’ll end my sermonising here – remember, sometimes it is just
about the music.