Review of Come On Feel by Mike Pattenden
From Vox November 1993
Production on this sixth album was run up to the last minute, with Evan Dando putting down vocals very late due to throat problems, but there's no hint of it sounding rushed or pressured. Such words don't exist in the man's laid-back lexicon. The material here feels instantly familiar, much of it having been filtered into a touring schedule which included triumphant sets at Glastonbury and Reading this summer. Passing acquaintances already sound like old friends, and Come On... comes on like a Greatest Hits set from the first chord of 'The Great Big No', its opening track.
Everything here - bar the stoned-at-the-piano
indulgence of 'The Jello Fund' - feels immediate and instant, and as such
Come On... is a natural successor to Its A Shame About Ray. Unsurprisingly
it shares a similar Antipodean lineage-Tom Morgan receives a credit for halt
the tracks here, and it was written in Sydney early this year. Even the
cover version and first single plucked from the album, a chiming love song
called `Into Your Arms', is taken from obscure Aussie band, Love Positions.
It's also one of three songs here which have turned up as acoustic B-sides
on single releases, adding to the sense of familiarity.
Juliana Hatfield is firmly in evidence
again, most notably on `It's About Time', the song Dando wrote for her and
first played to her, Richie Valens-style, down the telephoner. She materialises
three-quarters of the way through it with the line-word- "sunshine",
and instantly gives the whole thing such a radiant intensity that you want
to punch the air. Later Dando performs the same trick with Belinda Carlisle
on `I'll Do It Anyway', outlining his own go-for-it ideologue: "Its a
beautiful world": `Style' is an echo of earlier Lemonheads, coming on
like the ultimate slacker paean: a cluster of double negatives-"/ don't
wanna get stonedll don't wanna not get stoned" attached to some crunching
riffs. It's reprised later in horizontal-style with Rick James adding a touch
of sleaze for good measure. 'Big Gay Heart', a protest against anti-gay violence,
treads a thin fine between condescending sentimentality and heartfelt sincerity.
Naturally Dando pulls it off, aided by Sneaky Pete, who adds the sort of pedal
steel that just gnaws at your
heartstrings.
Fifteen songs, well twelve and-a-half, stamped with a hallmark of simplicity and resonance usually only attributed to the Lennon and McCartneys of this world. Want to bet they don't last as long?