Review of Baby I'm Bored by Chris Ott
From Pitchfork Media May 2003
Evan Dando doesn't look like any
of the crackheads I've come across in my time. He doesn't have pipe burns
on his lips, he's never told me his car just broke down, or that he needs
another five dollars to buy a bus ticket back home, but this bright-eyed son
of Brookline is indeed a recovering addict of said severity, a one-time court
jester whose self-abuse painted him into a major corner. While it's a tiny
corner, and a tiny stage-- relative to the superstar status and corollary
horse habit that drove his doppelganger Tigerbeat bad-guy to suicide-- Dando's
internalized enough commercial and critical failure over the last ten years
to build up quite a tolerance. I hope.
A girl I knew in high school wandered into Evan Dando's Martha's Vineyard
crash pad during his first or second of many lost summers in the mid 1990s.
I'm sure you've seen Boogie Nights; it was about that bad, and the soundtrack
was exactly the same. Within a matter of minutes, he offered her the pipe
and blazed away. She politely refused in her shy, teenage way, but wasn't
fazed; she didn't come away shocked, appalled or even depressed about his
low state, she just told everyone "I met Evan Dando and he was soooooo hot!"
With my pitiful stash and Elmer's pallor, I looked like chopped liver after
that, so thanks a lot Evan. You're going to learn about pain, my friend: see
that blonde mug on the cover of the record, girls? Look closer. That's Evan
Dando's wife. People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive 1993 is off the table.
Producer Bryce Goggin nearly turned the Lemonheads' cathartic 1996 finale
Car Button Cloth into psych-rock with his impossibly compressed, throbbing
overproduction, but his hand only helped underscore the desperation it documented.
Where the Dando-led Lemonheads' early, glossier pop was so effortless, the
grubby, duct-taped sound applied to the same simple songs increased their
resonance if it killed their marketability. On Baby I'm Bored, Goggin continues
where he left off, and almost makes this record worth listening to: his masterful
use of space, the almost direct-recorded vocal tracks and live-- but still
punchy-- drum kit bring out the best in these aimless tunes, recorded whenever,
wherever over the last few years.
The bookend tracks are the least cohesive, lobbing limp T. Rex and later Texarkana
riffs over a dog-tired, deflated rhythm section that probably thought they
had a killer groove going in their late-night haze. Though the closing minute
of "In The Grass All Wine Colored" is a soft kiss, the two minutes before
its arrival feel like twenty; as always, Dando's best stuff is sticky sweet,
but two of the four classically cute ditties on here were actually written
by one of his biggest fans, Ben Lee (who, while in Noise Addict, penned the
ultimate teenage envy anthem "I Wish I Was Him" about Dando). "All My Life"
is essentially a slowed-down, simplified redux of "The Outdoor Type" from
Car Button Cloth-- one of The Lemonheads' hokier moments-- but the Frampton
guitar winding throughout rebirths a spindly country shuffle, and an honest
apology (if he didn't write it himself).
Dando offers but two traditional Lemonheads tunes, the long-coming, long-titled
"The Same Thing You Thought Hard About Is The Same Part I Can Live Without",
previously available in promising acoustic form on the Aussie-only Live At
The Brattle Theater disc from 2001. Backed by distorted electrics and tambourines,
the chorus is too staged by verse-chorus-verse pacing, killing the balladeer
beaming that made fans hold out hope their shaggy savior was back on track;
it finally disintegrates into a sloppily assembled finale. "My Idea" houses
a brilliantly toned guitar solo as its central bridge, but it's not paired
with the bittersweet vocals you'd hope for, merely more of the depressed mumbling
Dando's resigned himself to. The only real bright spot on Baby I'm Bored is
its third and longest song, an organic, psychedelic guitar anthem influenced
as much by the Monkees' "Porpoise Song" as the Television Personalities' They
Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles (Dando's been seriously namedropping
TVP in advance of this album).
As with his last two releases, Baby I'm Bored is gutted by under-worked, inconsequential
two-minute ideas like "Why Do You Do This To Yourself?" and the collaboration-fascinated
"Waking Up", a needless, shaking duet with Spacehog's Royston Langdon that
longs for a real chorus. Langdon's wife Liv Tyler duets with Dando on a re-recording
of "Shots Is Fired", a retread of his excellent cover of Victoria Williams'
"Frying Pan" from the Heavy soundtrack (a film he and Tyler were feature players
in), but that better, brighter version is only available as the B-side for
the advance UK single "Stop My Head", an open-chord, toy-piano placeholder
without much to offer beyond lushly doubled vocals.
You may not know that Evan Dando lives about two blocks from where the World
Trade Center formerly stood, that the second plane flew right over his head,
and that this trauma is in large part responsible for the sobriety that produced
most of Baby I'm Bored. For his personal victories, Dando is still viewed
as a privileged prep school rock star, an unserious flake that continues to
cash in on good looks and teenage hooks; this record is not going to change
that situation, and as with his more severe but equally criticized female
counterpart-- the vexed Chan Marshall-- recent live shows are a gamble at
best, especially in hipster havens and major cities. For all the advance press,
if you've seen Dando lately, you may already know the pressure has knocked
him a few paces behind the wagon. Keeping tabs on a guy that smoked crack
for three straight months and freebased weeks away, no one minds his lips
all wine-colored, but whether he retains his sobriety or slips, Baby I'm Bored
is Dando taking on a second, and from the sound of things more difficult rehabilitation:
his career.