I may not know much about the Lemonheads’ repertoire but I was under the impression that their famous album ‘It’s a Shame about Ray’ ended by a speedy cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson. The Lemonheads were covering their entire album on Thursday night at the El Rey theater, and they did, except this last song. After checking I realized that only the re-issue of the 1992 album had the cover, but I guess Evan Dando is still pissed off by this idea of marketing from his label, and now prefers to forget about the whole thing.
But on Thursday night, Dando was such in a good spirit, playing his songs without even taking a breath between them, fast and efficiently and not saying much to the crowd, seemingly a little detached from his environment, but may be that’s just how he is all the time?
I must admit it, I was not listening to the Lemonheads in 1992, but I had certainly heard the album somewhere, at least the title track and a few other tunes sounded quite familiar when Dando, who is now the only member left from the original band, sang his short, fast songs full of gentle melodic hooks.
Dando, wearing brown sweater and pants, looked like he had just woken up with his scruffy long hair, but still looking handsome, in a little damaged way. No seriously he sounded good and looked happy, smiling a lot and I was just worried that the songs were going too fast,
as the trio was a little rushing through the album.
During the rendition of ‘It’s a Shame about Ray’, Dando was backed up by a bassist and a drummer whom he respectively introduced as Drew and Brian, and the show sounded as fast-paced as a punk-rock show, and loud enough to make me lose track of the lyrics, but there were enough die-hard fans around me to sing-along from start to finish. I realized that all these songs were big hits, classics, even though the Lemonheads never reached the stardom status that they ‘kinda shoulda sorta woulda’ as the Confetti song says.
Nostalgia, melancholy were present, but Dando was singing with confidence lyrics like ‘I’m too much with myself/I wanna be someone else’. He did not say much during the hour and half, just several ‘thank you for coming out’, sipping from a water bottle between songs, but never really pausing. I noticed an open book (with some lyrics on it? I am not sure) at his feet, and I don’t know if it was for some kind of reassurance because he never really looked at it.
Drew and Brian disappeared for a moment when they were done with the album, letting Dando assuring alone the second part of the show for a while, and playing a few acoustic songs, like ‘The Outdoor Type’, ‘Being Around’, a cover of Victoria Williams' ‘Frying Pan’, ‘The Streets of Baltimore’, a song that was covered by Gram Parsons, and ‘My idea’. For a while the time was suspended, after the rush-through-the album part, it was a moment for contemplation and people became very quiet, but still knowing the lyrics that they were hushing.
Dando received a lot of applause after the first acoustic song, people loved these moments, and honestly, I thought all these songs sound like country songs, but it was lovely.
The two musicians went back on stage soon after Dando had finished his quiet time, and it was back to the intense and fast delivery of the first part of the show, with the Nirvana-esque ‘If I Could Talk, I’d Tell You’ off their 1996 album ‘Car Button Cloth’, ‘The Great Big No’, ‘Into Your Arms’, and ‘Down About It’ off their 1993 ‘Come On Feel The Lemonheads’… but there were many others, a dynamic set of fast pop songs delivered in an explosive punk style.
During the whole show, Dando did not move much behind his mic, making an allusion to being tired from the long tour, but people in the crowd were sure moving, even ‘old’ ones according to mid-week-concert-goers standards.
There was a little sameness in the rhythm of all these songs that was only broken up by the distortion of the grungy ‘Style’, one of the last songs they played, ‘I don’t wanna get high/But I don’t wanna not get high…’ sang Dando suddenly bringing the evening into a much darker place. They all left the stage a little abruptly, without letting us know it was the last song,… the theater lights came back, and there was no encore, as no garnish at the top of our evening cup of 90s nostalgia was necessary.