Review of Car Button Cloth by Neil Strauss
From The New York Times, 15th October 1996
Like Counting Crows, the Lemonheads took three years between albums. In that time, the band's leader, Evan Dando, has gone from alternative-rock poster boy to perceived drug casualty. More visible at after-hours model parties than onstage, Mr. Dando has been in and out of rehabilitation, suffered a nervous breakdown and been plagued by voice loss. In fact, it's surprising that ''Car Button Cloth'' (Atlantic) came out as soon as it did.
The album strikes a nice balance between Mr. Dando's fall (''Losing Your Mind,'' ''Something's Missing'') and his redemption, which seems to be his sense of humor if songs like ''Six'' (about Gwyneth Paltrow's role in the film ''Seven'') are any indication. Mr. Dando's equivalent of Counting Crows' ''Long December'' is ''If I Could Talk I'd Tell You,'' in which he creeps toward the light at the end of the tunnel, singing, ''Flushed my Zoloft,/and we're coming around again.''
Like the last three of this 10-year-old band's albums, ''Car Button Cloth'' streamlines influences from punk to country into light, driving pop-rock, with nice guitar-picking and a few abrasive quirks. But though it's a pleasant album to listen to, it's also an easy one to forget.