Review of It's A Shame About Ray
by Sally Margaret Joy
From Melody Maker 27th June 1992
YOU LOVE CITRUS
What do the Lemonheads want from you? Unlike Nirvana, who want to raise your awareness, or Buffalo Tom, who want you to feel the hurt, Lemonheads simply want you to witness their exislence before they go out like a spark. It's the whol raison d'etre of pop and it ensures that these 12 windows in on what seems ro be a gorgeously romantic American existence (turnpikes, hanging out with Friends outside the Waverley Hotel, hoedown rhythms and five-buck guitar solos) will be accessible to even the staunchest of Englanders. After about 10 listens at 98 decibels in an open-topped Chevy, that is.
If your ears are tuned in to the
whole American thang then the songs are fantastically immediate. "Rudderless"
swallows your heart whole into its warm mouth. It aches with the impossible.
The melancholy,
loneliness and langour of adolesence seem to resonate in the thrum of acoustic
guitar. Evan Dando has
perfected the sound of teenage longing. Or maybe it's the sound of the desire
to stay innocent, and therefore
young, and therefore immortal. Whatever it is, he grounds it in just the right
amount of detail for it to be
sensed but not completely understood.
'My Drug Buddy' trails a rapturous surge of love (or plain old hormones, depending what mood you're in) on a stroll from the candy store to the phone booth. You're there. You can feel the warmth of the pavement coming up through your shoes. You can feel it turn cold as the sun falls behind the buildings. You are not really stuck in your bedsit under the flyover. You cannot ask for more.
Brace yourselves, it's time for a fact. Evan Dando is the Lemonhead(s). The others left somewhere between 89's "Lick" and 1990's 'Lovey' because Dando wanted to play everything himself. Unless you happen to be Prince, if tends to be impossible for an artist to play all the instruments and then give a vocal performance that doesn't sound like they're worrying about the frequency of the snare sound. So Dando's wisely teamed bock up with drummer David Ryan and ex-Blake Baby Juliana Hatfield on bass and vocals. Juliana's crystal voice traps a lot of light which, thankfully, has the effect of breaking up the smudge of Dando's occasionally rather beige voice. Oh, it' a nice enough beige. The beigeness of an ordinary, buttery haired, American kid with a weird name and strong Anglophilic tendencies, tendencies that make their presence keenly felt in the Elvis Coslello soundalike "Alison's Starting To Happen'. This one'll sound a lot like pukey old skinny tie power pop to some of you, and as new and thrilling as Pavement to others.
If you're expecting grunge,you'll be horribly disappointed because Dando's written songs, ones that feature slide guitar (Jeff "Skunk" Baxter on "Hannah And Gabi"), and procul Harum-style, Farfise (Barry Goldberg on "My Drug Buddy") and strange words that seep into your consciousness even when you're conscious that they're ridiculous ("Ceiling Fan In My Spoon"). Some of you are still possessed of the thoroughly old fashioned idea that songs with words demanding to be listened to are a bad thing. I suggest you purchase this album and get cured quick. Try not to resist.
"It's A Shame About Ray" is released on July 6.