Lemonheads - It’s a shame about Evan

It's hard to resist the temptation to title this story “The Band That Lived Twice” as well. It's a worn-out formula, fair enough, one we've used ourselves on other occasions for other bands with more or less rocky histories, and its impact has suffered for it over time. Still, anyone who knows the artistic arc of the Lemonheads well enough can't help but agree with that cliché, since there's no more fitting or concise way to sum it up. When you get down to it, this is one of the most remarkable cases of artistic metamorphosis you're likely to come across, with two distinct eras, two incarnations, and a single individual calling the shots to truly make the difference. Looking closer, this is also, and above all, his story: as wild and tangled as a film script, so absurd at times that it turns into a template, handy for rattling off a decent string of anecdotes at just the right moment. Evan Griffith Dando, a singer, but a character first and foremost. Among the wealth of wonderful, novel-worthy stories that blossomed in the alternative scene of the early Nineties, his is one of our favourites. Firstly because it captures, like few others, the typical “meteoric rise and crash” trajectory of a rock'n'roll starlet; secondly because, almost as if by design, it seems packed with the most well-worn genre clichés (including the gem of a voice that seems ruined forever by crack abuse, only to miraculously return); and lastly because, though tossed off rather quietly, the final chapters written so far have all the flavour of a happy ending, at least as far as things seemed to be going for our protagonist at a certain point.

We Wanted To Be The Replacements

Boston, mid-Eighties. Ben Deily, Evan Dando and Jesse Peretz are three scions of the city's upper middle class, bored and not especially brilliant students at the prestigious Commonwealth School. To kill time, in their graduation year they turn one whim among many into a full-fledged pastime, a band called The Whelps, essentially doing their best to imitate the stars of the thriving local hardcore scene and, above all, those of Washington D.C., Minor Threat chief among them. The son of a wealthy lawyer and a model, Evan tries his hand at guitar, drums and vocals as best he can, though he remains in the shadow of the more charismatic Ben, who handles the same roles. Songwriting is left to the two fledgling leaders' own initiative, while Jesse sticks to playing bass. A few months go by, Dando's academic career comes to an end after a few disastrous weeks at the exclusive Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, and the trio's name has already changed, borrowed from the lemon-flavoured candies made by Ferrara Pan, “with a sour shell and a very sweet heart.”

This is how the Lemonheads mean to sound right from their debut EP, Laughing All The Way To The Cleaners, and from their first scrappy shows in the summer of 1986. They move along the line separating pure punk flare-ups—filthy, schizoid and overwrought (“I Am A Rabbit,” a cover of New Zealand's Proud Scum)—from the abrasive alternative sound of their more illustrious fellow townsmen, Replacements and Husker Du, whose influence makes itself felt rather heavily, especially on the excellent “Glad, I Don’t Know.”

The deal with local label Taang! isn't long in coming, and by June 1987 the debut album is already in stores. Produced by Tom Hamilton and largely recorded with the help of drummer Doug Trachten, Hate Your Friends comes on as fairly furious punk-rock, built on scouring, chunky guitars, but with an added slacker-pop streak of adorable recklessness thrown in for good measure. The early Lemonheads are a noisy, heavy-footed and rather fun band, quite shaggy-dog in their vocal parts (though melody is never abandoned): a great wall of guitar sound, meaty rhythms, an amiably overwrought pace reminiscent of their ideal Californian godfathers from half a decade or so earlier. Their take on the hymn “Amazing Grace” says a lot about the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the project and the record.

Personality and energy, in any case, already seem fairly substantial. Clattering, scruffy, biting and jagged, the Boston boys play their sweet, hammering alt-rock with the blissful recklessness of people who aren't counting the cost, and they hit the mark precisely thanks to this resolute (and rather energetic) purity of angry young chicks. Amid the mix, there are also cleaner, more intriguing moments to savour, like “Don’t Tell Yourself It’s Ok,” the ones that best foreshadow the radical turn that will come soon enough. A fine showcase, as well as confirmation that, even at this stage, alongside the exuberance, the band already has the talent to craft something more elaborate and mature, even if that's still a minority pursuit. Their preferred mould remains, in fact, rowdy hardcore punk, borrowed as best they can from Descendents and company, at times derivative in its slavish copying, but ultimately understandable given the quartet's still-green songwriting (the closing trio “Fed Up” – “Rat Velvet” – “Fucked Up”).

In the muddle, Evan is already recognizable, even if the Evan of "Nothing True" or the schizoid scrawl "Sneakyville" - blazing and burnt out - is still a kid in short pants and a crew cut, more than anything a howler caught in full adolescent turmoil. Buried under the atrocious, ultra-reverbed chaos of "Belt", he comes across far more like a budding Cobain (in real life only about ten days separate them) than the languid heartthrob he'll turn into within five years' time. At this stage, the songs written by the more reckless Ben Deily are more appealing - lively, sugary, featuring the most savage electric guitars in the whole catalogue, with a poisoned bonbon or two in store, as in the single "Second Chance". Even when the spotlight is his, beneath the lovely fuzz-driven sonic tangles, the romantic streak still comes through loud and clear. Outtakes like "Mod Lang" or "Sad Girl" - both tucked into the compilation "Crawling From Within" - show the band in a more composed, evocative variant, almost college-rock, if not meaner still ("Buried Alive"), albeit within the limits of genre cliché.

Barely a year goes by before it's already time for the follow-up, Creator. Broadly speaking, the lineup and approach remain the same, though this time drums are handled by John Strohm of Blake Babies, and the band as a whole sounds more polished, less impulsive or genuine, barking plenty but without really biting. Evan in particular seems short on bite in his yowling hardcore quickies, in the vein of early Mudhoney and Nirvana singles but without a trace of the joyous madness of an Arm or a Cobain. So, beyond the usual electric flare-ups, this time around he just can't manage to leave a mark. For the most part the band comes across as half-hearted, on a record that, predictably, scrapes the bottom of the barrel to recover previously discarded material. The odd rough edge smoothed out here and there isn't matched by any deeper development in the songwriting, because the approach stays chaotic and hasty, though with a few enjoyable flashes scattered about ("Sunday"). The script repeats itself without any real jolts, with not much bite and a good dose of predictability. Reasonably fun, spirited episodes like "Falling" or "Take Her Down" remain surface-level divertissements and fail to really register or stick in memory. The cover of Charles Manson's "Your Home Is Where You're Happy" is a crooked, acoustic little sketch in which Dando, in hindsight, gives a faint hint of what the Lemonheads will eventually become, developing this side of the band at the expense of the more electric, aggressive one.

Evan deepens his own pursuit as a songwriter, taking just half a step forward with "Die Right Now", though still held back by the easy temptations of an aimless, unrefined youthful rage. He and his bandmates essentially carry out the assignments laid out by the textbook they'd set for themselves, but the result still feels scholastic and a bit dull, more fitting for a garage band at a high-school talent show than for a pack of up-and-comers looking to speak seriously in their own voice. Given that standard, things then get worse with the cover of Kiss's "Plaster Caster", an unwittingly cartoonish rendition of an arena-rock style already well past its sell-by date, all hard-rock bravado and laughable chest-puffing, while certain softer moments ("Come To The Window") prove no less unsettling, their built-in sappiness only compounding the overall shortage of usable ideas.

The half-failure of Creator is not just an impression. By the end of 1988 the band has effectively reached the end of the road, and Evan is the first to pack his bags, finding refuge with his friends in the Blake Babies (of his girlfriend Juliana Hatfield). Incredibly, though, an offer for a European tour the following summer comes in from a promoter, and the group is reassembled with the sole purpose of having new material to play live. Dando is hastily brought back in as singer and drummer but not as second guitarist, an honor that goes instead to Corey Loog Brennan of Bullet Lavolta. Given the by-now irreparable friction between the two singers, the sessions for the new album, Lick, are nothing short of turbulent: only five new tracks are recorded by the duo of Tom Hamilton and Terry Katzman, and the rest of the release has to be padded out with a few worthwhile odds and ends dug out of storage.

It doesn't take many clues to notice that something has changed. Just a handful of seconds of the opening "Mallo Cup" is enough: a more orderly approach than ever, jangle-pop touches as decoration, a genial tone calling the shots. Sure, the band can't fully rein in its lovely youthful impetuousness, but it still reveals far more structure than its recent output, whether through the substance and punch of a genuine easy-listening sensibility, or through the happy compromise between electric drive and acoustic embroidery, between shadows and radiant carefree spirit. It's a track that's paradigmatic for the Lemonheads, who - immediately afterward, with the rough-and-ready reprise of "Glad I Don't Know", revised and corrected in name only - would seem reluctant to let go of the past just yet. The contrast that emerges amounts to a form of imbalance that is nonetheless healthy, testifying to the band's still largely uncontaminated vitality.

At the crossroads of these directions sits a stylized yet effervescent power-pop that, on "7 Powers", proves a close cousin of the chart-ready sound of a Minneapolis band then on the rise, Soul Asylum. While here the band still indulges in lovely noisy digressions, the new direction reasserts itself forcefully elsewhere, as in the reflective "A Circle Of One", where Evan seems to be rehearsing the soft roots-rock sound, complete with the tormented pose, that will go on to become his trademark.

Within the economy of a crazy record like Lick, for every track like this there's a fresh excess ready to tip the scales back the other way. The most striking, written by Brennan drawing on his brief stint with the Roman band Superfetazione (but sung by Dando in a grotesque Italian), is titled Cazzo di ferro and remains perhaps the most obscure gem of the band's thirty-year career, standing at the polar opposite - all ulcers and frat-boy humor in this hard-rock number - of the gentleness that will go on to sell a few million copies with It's A Shame About Ray. A show of bravado on a grand scale, but of the particularly delicious, and despite its simple-mindedness, unforgettable kind.

Although still full of naivety and even glaring flaws, the record is quite enjoyable, lively, fun, torn as it is between well-behaved college-rock and wildly over-the-top theatrical bravado, two tendencies often condensed into the very same high-energy song. The Lemonheads can also turn out pretty fierce when they put their minds to it ("Come Back D.A.", yet another Cobain-esque flare-up - this one genuinely striking - on "Mad"), convincing on more irregular, disturbed, sickly or tipsy-sounding turns, even though this side of the band is destined to be progressively muted.

The reminder of the punk season found in "I Am A Rabbit" is even rather endearing, but representing the band's most pyrotechnic and evocative incarnation are also the reprised "Ever" and the remarkable "Sad Girl". Tossed between extremes throughout, Lick comes across as a thoroughly inconsistent, charmingly disjointed album, a kind of (still thoroughly solid) sampler of what the band can do. In any case, at this particular juncture the band is also the self-aware one, tempted by the pop of the more ambitious "Strange", with Evan sounding languid and rough-edged at once. The cover of Suzanne Vega's "Luka" becomes a reasonably successful single, populist and polished just the right amount, proof that the quartet has what it takes to break through with a more orthodox formula. Dando as a vocalist, for his part, shows he has grown considerably and is ready, if nothing else, for the step up in quality that only a major label can guarantee.

A Series of Fortunate Events

The definitive break between the two frontmen, in any case, comes before summer, and the balance of power from a few months earlier is now reversed. Ben doesn't take part in the upcoming tour and leaves to pursue an academic career that will see him graduate with honors from Harvard five years later, before going on to become a highly successful advertising executive. With no rivals left calling the shots, Evan takes charge of a band that's nearly adrift and rebuilds it from scratch. The first and arguably most decisive piece of the puzzle is signing with Atlantic/Warner and bringing in a high-profile producer like Paul Q. Kolderie, who in the previous three years had worked with Pixies, Dinosaur Jr and Uncle Tupelo. Peretz stays in the lineup, with Brennan now in a more peripheral role, while David Ryan takes the drum stool. The new album, Lovey, comes out in July 1990.

The opening is punchy and pleasingly noisy, as if to keep an ideal bridge to the previous indie era, almost like a small treat for the die-hard early fans. "Ballarat" is one of those nervy, confused, elusive tracks that bring out the most tormented side of Dando, now finally a solo man in charge. The step up in quality can be felt not only in his own weighty performance but also, thanks to a thoroughly impressive Ryan, behind the drums. It's "Half The Time", though, that truly ushers in the new era for the band, thanks to the successful marriage of acoustic and electric, as well as the typically bittersweet, mildly languid inflection that Evan's singing brands onto the band's style like a hallmark. Paired with it, "Ride With Me" represents the Massachusetts outfit's first real hit, as well as a terrific postcard of the Neil Young-style performer, troubled and conflicted, that the American singer has never denied wanting to be, and which right at this point he has begun to cultivate with real persistence, sensing the good returns it brings with audiences of both sexes.

Evan plays this part of the romantic, listless rocker with a certain credibility, but his commitment to the character ends up partly undermining a record that lacks equal measures of edge and enthusiasm, despite its noteworthy moments and clear change of pace. Alongside the crowd-pleasing ballads, the Lemonheads slot in a few more unbalanced, lively episodes, in a version nonetheless considerably more watered-down compared to their counterparts on the Taang!-era albums ("Year Of The Cat", the more formulaic and listless "Li'l Seed"), an Eighties legacy evidently impossible for the quirky Evan to shake off entirely.

Overall, the formula of Lovey is as orderly as it is predictable. So, against an undeniable refinement of style - one that will prove crucial, with hindsight, for the albums to follow - what's missing are the big jolts, because there's more head than heart at work here, and as the listen goes on you can't help but note a second side that's rather dull in its sheer consistency, with the sole exceptions of yet another spot-on cover (the brilliant "Brass Buttons"), this time of the openly declared idol Gram Parsons, and of the more interesting, irregular "Door". The man's goofball streak gets its moment to shine in the untitled prank phone call tacked on at the end.

Sales prove thoroughly disappointing (eleven thousand copies in the first year), but Atlantic decides to renew its bet and not cut the Boston outfit loose. At the start of 1991, they instead decide to release an expanded version of an Ep the band had put out via Roughneck Records the previous year, Favorite Spanish Dishes, to all intents and purposes a turning-point mini-album. Even better produced, rounder and fuller in sound, more melody-oriented, the Lemonheads of this transitional collection show they truly have what it takes to break through: cheeky, sharp yet also achingly sweet, they give their definitive welcome to the Nineties with a thoroughly contemporary, sparkling mix whose brightest showcase is the marvel of "Different Drum" - yet another cover, this time of Mike Nesmith of the Monkees (via Linda Ronstadt). Even the more powerful, direct passages ("Paint") no longer show the naivety of the old days; the band knows how to keep its own exuberance on a leash, indulging, at just the right moment, in sharper, more unpredictable digressions.

In keeping with Lovey, there's also an electroacoustic reprise of "Ride With Me", immediately followed by a more fragile but intriguing rereading of the Misfits' "Skulls", as if to certify the bittersweet-ballad formula that Evan will increasingly pull off with proverbial ease. The only exception in this picture is the oddity of "Step By Step", still a child of the most frivolous eighties, best taken as an off-the-cuff experimental diversion, tending toward kitsch but ultimately not so terrible.

These releases from 1990/91 are the last to feature founding member Jesse Peretz, who departs to pursue a successful career as a photographer and filmmaker (he directed numerous videos for the Lemonheads, Ash, Nada Surf, and The Roots, crowned by a Grammy win for the Foo Fighters' "Learn To Fly" clip) and director (commercially successful comedies like "Our Idiot Brother"). At the same time, the older Corey Loog Brennan also leaves, going on to become a university professor and author on ancient history.

During an Australian tour, Dando strikes up a friendship with the members of a Sydney power-pop band, Godstar, whose bassist Nic Dalton joins the group on several occasions live. The Lemonheads' frontman stays in the area long enough to write, together with singer Tom Morgan (leader of Smudge and later of Sneeze, as well as the aforementioned Godstar), enough songs to put together a new album. That record, produced by the Robb Brothers – a trio of siblings active since the late Sixties (Art Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Harry Nilsson) – is titled It's A Shame About Ray and is recorded in the States without their Aussie friends (who don't manage to get their visas in time). Nic Dalton therefore doesn't take part in the sessions, replaced on bass by Evan's girlfriend, Juliana Hatfield.

Released for the first time in June 1992, true to Boston tradition the record struggles to take off commercially, which would be a crime. This is in fact a muted comeback, rough yet very sweet, with which the band, through a few simple touches, manages to produce a genuine gem of immediacy, a small collection of instant classics built on basic phrasing and a formidable harmonic ear. One of Dando's countless covers, "Mrs. Robinson", originally released as a single and intended for a cassette reissue to mark the 25th anniversary of "The Graduate", becomes a smash hit and convinces the label to use it right away as the lead track for an immediate reissue of the album. Beyond the irony of scoring big with a non-original song, a B-side no less, for the Lemonheads it's exactly the turning point they needed.

From the very start, with "Rockin Stroll", the guitars bite while the organ and melodies intoxicate, seductive as ever. Then "Confetti" comes along and hits immediately, masking its beat roots with a swaggering, electric exuberance straight out of the provinces. It's a genuine populist triumph, an unsettled, wildly vital kind of easy-listening that takes no prisoners. Right after, the title track – inspired by a newspaper headline read in Sydney – delivers the proverbial coup de grâce with gentleness, flaunting a fine authorial self-assurance and a refrain that cuts like a nostalgic knife, within a fragrant, rough yet intimate sonic framework. The Lemonheads' growth in terms of sheer punch is impressive, all the more so considering that, aside from the steady rhythmic backbone provided by Ryan's drumming, good old Evan did it all on his own (Juliana mostly works as an embroiderer with her voice).

A fast but irresistible record, then, with the frontman perfectly at ease playing the handsome brooder, actually far less cursed than many other standard-bearers of his generation, and the shapeshifter in a phase of blissful detachment ("Kitchen", penned by Dalton). When he sets aside the electric guitar and lets himself be accompanied by a hammond organ, striking his most tormented yet endearing pose, he hits the mark almost tenderly, helped along perhaps by one of those little tunes that ask only to be sung over and over until it's unbearable ("My Drug Buddy", for one), but even running on a kind of autopilot he manages to pull a pocket-sized earworm out of his hat, needing only sudden flares of fuzz, a choral boost placed at just the right moment, and the requisite poker face. If "Hannah & Gabi" marries acoustic lightness with finely grained melodicism, yet another pearl of melancholic intimism in perfect Rem-style, and if "Alison's Starting To Happen" (dedicated to Smudge drummer Alison Galloway) even sketches a curious take on early-sixties revivalism somewhere between harmless garage and doo-wop, squeezing every bit of value out of the dust shrewdly kicked up, the memory of their hardcore punk past fades into benevolent self-mockery on "Ceiling Fan In My Spoon", a laddish but joyful jest.

The quick blast of "Bit Part" is just as perfect as the whole album at muddying the waters, caught between naive rebelliousness and tender, retreating insinuations, all in under two minutes. Dando crafts a mature, no-frills brand of songwriting while still being able to give voice to a deeply adolescent restlessness, essentially channeling the fire of his earliest work through the filter of extremely catchy power-pop. This instinct is what explains the extraordinary success of It's A Shame About Ray. In part, at least. Because the rest comes down to luck too, a particularly favorable set of circumstances that saw this music – too conformist and middle-class for the ruptures of grunge, yet too dark for the respectability of radio rock – ride its own inherent contradictions with good timing, unexpectedly break through, and sell far more than could have been predicted (it would reach No. 3 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart). Credit for this also goes to the aforementioned cover (not exactly memorable or groundbreaking) of "Mrs. Robinson", tacked on at the end of the tracklist right after the fragile, enchanting rereading of "Frank Mills" from the musical "Hair".

A Power-Pop Icarus

In 1992/93, success gives Dando wings: he lands numerous magazine covers, not all of them music-related, and is included in People magazine's list of the fifty most beautiful people. Pressure from Warner grows exponentially, and so does the singer's drug abuse, by this point even welcomed into the inner circle of the Cobains.

In October 1993, the eagerly awaited Come On Feel The Lemonheads hits stores, with the immediate novelty of the article "The" added to the band's name. Since you don't change a winning formula, the lineup stays the same as on its successful predecessor (the only swap being Dalton for Hatfield on bass), and so does the approach, now boosted on every front: it's not simply a matter of ease and confidence, because the sound as a whole appears polished, brighter and fuller, the crowning touch of an extremely meticulous, at times almost calligraphic production once again handled by the Robb Brothers, with sumptuous vocal harmonies, killer tape-ready choruses, and craftsmanship attentive to even the smallest detail.

The opening run of five singles among the first six tracks is simply lethal, both for its relentless pace and for a frontman who's immediately in fine form. Something, however, seems to have gotten lost along the way inside these small, carefully engineered, expertly crafted easy-listening war machines: immediacy above all, and with it that sheer recklessness, that occasionally clumsy or irreverent abandon which these songs, however catchy, no longer seem to possess. For its brazenness and wonderfully nostalgic streak, "Down About It" is the only track that more vividly recalls the dishevelled mood of Ray. The band's signature twang-pop now sounds precise and irresistible, elevated by a flood of vocal harmonies, and the back-and-forth between Dando and Hatfield on "It's About Time" comes close to bubblegum, even with guitars far too roaring for the genre's usual rules.

There's no shortage of more measured, contemplative passages, but the happy introspection of before is now overturned by an approach that feels triumphant even when the intimism card is played (with the laudable exception of the more subdued "Favourite T"), amid beatific declarations and an unconditional good cheer that seems to have washed away both the old nervous edge and the shadows that once filled the lyrics. "Big Gay Heart" and the lively "Being Around" venture into country territory with surprising confidence and a touch too much aestheticizing temptation, but this in no way undermines the rule of a record produced, played and sung magnificently, whose loss of genuineness has to be filed away as a venial sin. On the second side, the script repeats with more crowd-pleasing numbers that lean into the cliché of joyous power-pop carefree-ness, sweetly abrasive when needed but never truly fierce (the only flashes of nastiness come in the romp of "Style", a flexing of muscle by the Dalton-Ryan outfit that feels out of place regardless), with a few solid singalongs loaded up and handed to a Juliana sounding sweeter than ever.

Then there's Evan's outburst, who right in the middle of the party hides behind the convenient mask of another musician famous for his addiction issues, claiming for himself that moment of peace and privacy, his own right to confusion, even emotional confusion, in an obsessive and particularly unsettled boogie that runs openly against the jubilant tenor of the record. But "Rick James Style", featuring Rick James himself, turns out to be just a flash in the pan, because by the time the raucous, contagious reminder of "You Can Take It With You" kicks in, the band has already picked the thread back up.

As expected, Come On Feel The Lemonheads sells extremely well, putting one of its singles ("Into Your Arms", written by another Aussie friend, Robin St. Clare, Nic's bandmate in the Hummingbirds and Godstar) at the top of Billboard's "Modern Rock Tracks" chart for nine consecutive weeks, a record at the time. There's no doubt about it: the Lemonheads have turned into the monstrous hit-churning machine (just listen to the chorus of a lesser cut like "I'll Do It Anyway") that Atlantic had been waiting for, and in doing so they've clearly sacrificed their darker, more tormented side. For now, though, things can only go well: their frontman's sheer talent keeps them balanced on their crest, and everything seems to be working like a charm.

Seems, exactly. During an interview with the NME, Evan shows up in embarrassing shape, with barely a voice left. A few days later he'll admit to a reporter from Q that he's gone too far smoking crack and heroin, effectively acknowledging he has a serious problem. During the band's performance at the 1994 Reading Festival, he wears a coat belonging to the recently deceased Kurt Cobain, a gift – symbolic at the very least – from a Courtney Love who had for some time been showing a little too much interest in him.

During this phase he takes small parts in well-received films such as "Giovani, Carini e Disoccupati" ("Reality Bites", 1994, with Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder) and "Dolly's Restaurant" ("Heavy", 1995, alongside Liv Tyler), and strikes up a friendship with the Gallagher brothers even before the release of their debut, "Definitely Maybe": over the following years he will often turn up on stage with Oasis for the occasional guest appearance. At the same time he keeps his ties to Australia alive, taking part in the recording of the Sneeze's eponymous album, of "Coastal" and of the "Glasgow Ep" by Godstar (alongside, among others, Eugene Kelly of the Vaselines, who shortly after will co-write "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You" with him) and the launch of Tom Morgan's new project, The Givegoods.

On one of these trips, he is arrested at Sydney airport, high on acid and bleeding, just days before a disastrous (and late) appearance on stage at Glastonbury 1995. At this point many are willing to bet on a tragic ending for him along the lines of the aforementioned Cobain, yet the shattered singer not only refuses to give up, but manages, with a handful of new musicians, to record the most humble and epic record of his band's career.

Released in October 1996, again on Atlantic/Warner (through the subsidiary Tag), Car Button Cloth is a huge surprise. With Ryan, Dalton and Hatfield no longer by his side, the frontman enlists the help of a returning John Strohm (now on second guitar), Australian bassist Bill Gibson, Dinosaur Jr's Patrick "Murph" Murphy on drums and, above all, the great instincts of producer Bryce Goggin (Swans, Come, Band Of Susans, Pavement), the true architect of a captivating and remarkably disciplined work.

What resurfaces is an Evan who looks lively on the surface, as noisy as he's been in recent memory, faithfully translating into sound the emotional turmoil he's found himself caught up in ever since success came knocking. Right near the start he drops perhaps the most outrageous easy-listening gem of his entire career, "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You", in the vein of the band's finest power-pop.

But behind the carefree charm, behind that killer refrain and a catchiness bordering on indecency, he shows no intention of silencing his fair share of bitterness, fears and anxieties. A sense of inadequacy weighs on him like a heavy shadow, worn down as he now is by the runaway pace of the carousel and evidently inclined to make amends for the many reckless moves and mistakes made over the previous four years.

The first side is simply formidable, quite possibly the most intense thing he's managed to put together in a decade-plus career. But instead of Durban's smiles and the artist too easily likened to some genial, almost jovial ideal of a deity, what emerges is a rumpled songwriter, undermined by an unsuspected fragility and, by his own admission, prone to self-sabotage. The record reflects his troubled nature, sounding nervous, draughty, full of barely-contained frustration and rage, while coming across as more genuine than those couple of celebrated predecessors. "Break Me" is emblematic. The guitars tower over the frontman, whose voice, torn and wounded, struggles to push through. The dramatic device is a bit forced, but it doesn't feel out of place at all, because it isn't used for cheap theatrical effect but rather to present, without artifice, a painful and genuine restlessness (the same restlessness that drives the seemingly more buoyant "Hospital"). The beauty of it is that, despite the suffering, Evan doesn't give up being himself, and still doles out his usual melodic gems with the necessary tenderness.

One of the highlights of this difficult yet unforgettable collection is the splendid ballad, threadbare yet proud, "The Outdoor Type", yet another successful foray of his into roots territory that anticipates the more explicitly country (though streaked) "Knoxville Girl". No matter how much he puts on a brave face, there's no feeling safe even in moments that used to be more reassuring, like this one: peace of mind remains out of reach, and the rawness that shows through everywhere hints that this record will indeed mark a dead end. Other passages are in fact less radiant and mimic a general confusion, while the music backs up the ominous implications of the titles with a gravity that's thrilling in its own right (the building electric dusk of "Losing Your Mind", the increasingly slurred, almost barked lyrics). "Something has slipped away," Dando seems to declare, laying himself bare and letting noise and disorientation do the talking, sometimes with the punk-pop recklessness of happier days, before howling once more like a Cobain stand-in ("Tenderfoot", "6ix", "Something's Missing").

Between "One More Time" and the tender confession of "C'Mon Daddy" (featuring his friend Liv Tyler), a little room for hope does open up in the closing stretch, before "Secular Rockulidge" veers even into death-metal territory, echoing Metallica.

Car Button Cloth stands as the most bloated, overflowing, bleeding record in the entire Lemonheads catalogue, with little polish and plenty of ravenous guitars. Some promotional copies' track listing includes "Purple Parallelograms", the song Evan co-wrote with his friend Noel Gallagher, which, at the latter's own request, was then left off the official version of the album (another unreleased track, "My Hero Zero", would later be loaned to the fun compilation "Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks").

The Death and Resurrection of Evan Griffith Dando

The artistically encouraging results of the seventh Lemonheads LP mask the enormous difficulties its creator is grappling with during this turbulent phase. For one thing, he can no longer write music. Despite attempts to get clean, he remains a slave to his alcohol and drug addiction, and in his increasingly rare solo or band appearances he seems far from lucid, with depression offering no way out. In the course of 1997 one of his closest friends, Epic Soundtracks of Swell Maps, commits suicide, and the show at the Reading festival turns out to be his last live appearance before the band's split is announced. Slowly, though, having hit rock bottom, Evan begins the gradual climb out of the black pit he'd fallen into. The following year deserves to be remembered for the release of the band's only greatest-hits compilation, for Dando's mention in Bret Easton Ellis's novel "Glamorama", and above all for the start of his relationship with English model and photographer Elizabeth Moses, to whom he would later be married for about a decade, and who would be immortalized on the cover of his one and only solo album.

In 2000 the singer begins working with Jon Brion, returns to songwriting and to performing live solo. The concert held at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge in October becomes an official bootleg, Live At The Brattle Theatre, released the following year, presenting him in more-than-decent form amid old classics, unreleased songs destined for his future solo debut, and a trio of surprising covers: the joyful "Frying Pan" (Victoria Williams), an a cappella "Excuse Me Mister" (Gale Garnett) and, above all, "Thirteen" by Big Star. And speaking of covers, the Griffith Sunset Ep, included with the CD and produced by Goggin and Howe Gelb, shows the Bostonian tackling one of his longtime fixations, the classics of American musical tradition, country above all: from two versions of Fred Neil's famous "Badi-Da" (already reworked by Mark Lanegan a couple of years earlier) to a fluttering yet shadowy "Fraulein" by Lawton Williams (where the hand of Mr. Giant Sand is unmistakable), all the way to clearer-cut moments like John Prine's "Sam Stone" or the tribute to Hank Williams written by Tim Hardin: the mini-album is off-the-cuff but rather enjoyable.

Having witnessed the horror of September 11th from a terrace just a few blocks from the World Trade Center proves, meanwhile, to be the decisive jolt for Dando. He soon returns to the recording studio, and the solo debut released under his own name in February 2003, Baby I'm Bored, is a genuine all-star parade: Jon Brion, Bryce Goggin, Tom Biller and Craig Schumacher take turns behind the console, while the same Goggin and Brion, Tom Morgan, Howe Gelb, Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino, Chris Brokaw and Arthur Johnson of Come, Royston Langdon of Spacehog, and Australian singer-songwriter Ben Lee all contribute to the writing and performances in various capacities. The story behind the latter is particularly curious, since he'd written the song "I Wish I Was Him" about the Lemonheads frontman ten years earlier, and now ends up credited among his most trusted collaborators.

Listless, dazed, gangly and dressed down, just when expectations for him have all but evaporated, Evan surprises everyone by getting back on his feet with this collection of spare singer-songwriter sketches, warmed by the reassuring sunlight of his finest melodic gift. Beyond the quality of the record itself, what really wins you over is precisely this low-key existential and expressive stance of his, that good-natured, familiar laziness — almost dressing-gown-and-slippers territory — which strips the songs of excessive ambition, as well as of the spotless perfectionism his steamroller of a band displayed back in the days of Come On Feel The Lemonheads.

For the American artist this is the album of adult reconciliation, first and foremost with himself, a self-aware, sincere, intimate work with an almost domestic warmth to it, an unbroken reflection on the dangerous excesses of his past, from which he distances himself with a healthy dose of irony too. And in their simple, down-to-earth candour, these new songs rank among the most dazzling of the Bostonian's entire career, offered up without pretension, one frugal yet luminous insight after another, delivered with a serene, amiably chatty gait that never bothers to airbrush away the ugliness or the less-than-glossy details. The conversation opened up by Car Button Cloth here finds its most authentic and moving form, following a vein of introspection that is often quite painful, yet which offers the makings of a full-blown happy ending (at least a temporary one) when, on "Hard Drive", our man reels off a litany of blessings that have effectively saved him on his reckless ride on the music-industry carousel, and in life.

A record that speaks metaphorically of awakenings, then, with a playful and disenchanted tone that wins you over through the genuine, slightly dazed sincerity of an utterly human perspective, that of a true anti-star (the underscoring of a buoyant piano on the emblematic "Waking Up" or on the single "Stop My Head", the electric blaze that engulfs everything in the former). Across the whole range there isn't a single track that falls short, swinging from raw, unfiltered introspection to livelier, more engaged numbers like "It Looks Like You", without ever betraying the underlying stance, a bath in artistic and existential humility. These are sour songs, that sting in moderation, only to surprise you with some detail of disharmonic, dishevelled, tangled beauty, impossible not to grow fond of.

Among the truly memorable moments, the folk-rock of "Rancho Santa Fe" set alight almost gently, and even more so the wonderful "The Same Thing You Thought Hard About Is The Same Part I Can Live Without", delivered with the distant, furrowed inflection of someone who imagines they can hide their own fragility and then overwhelms you with visceral emotional candour. In the most honest and moving work of his career, Dando's voice has never sounded so disarmed and disarming, perfect for recounting his own battered (but rediscovered) identity. While spare production and live-take immediacy prevail, sparing itself formal adulterations so as not to sacrifice the quiet energy of spontaneity ("Why Do You Do This To Yourself"), scraps of the old populism resurface just with "All My Life" (one of the titles penned by Ben Lee), the poor but pretty sister of certain old-time classics, and well aware of it.

Among the outtakes later set aside for the reissue almost three lustres later – besides alternate and in some cases improved versions (see the magnificent "Shots If Fired", on which his friend Liv Tyler sings) – a joyous, rowdy "Tongue Tied", perfectly in keeping with the record's atmosphere, the tasty country-blues of "I Wanna Be Your Mamma Again", the more ulcerated and visionary "Sucker Punch" and a drunken "Walk In The Woods With Lionel Richie" that deserves, if nothing else, credit for its title.

Between 2003 and 2004, a revitalized Evan collaborates with the Dandy Warhols on "Welcome To The Monkey House" (co-writing "The Last High") and performs as the singer of Mc5 on a forty-one-date tour. With his old grit restored, the time is evidently ripe for a Lemonheads reunion. The reunion materializes live the following year, depending on the occasion alongside Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez of the Descendents, or else George Berz and Josh Lattanzi. Two September shows at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London for the Atp "Don't Look Back" festival see the trio perform It's A Shame About Ray in full. Twelve months later, in the midst of a string of self-celebratory tours, the Lemonheads' eighth official album is released by the small label Vagrant, with special guests Garth Hudson and J Mascis.

The eponymous The Lemonheads is a comeback that, right from its opening with "Black Gown", catapults the listener back into the band's distant past, somewhere between Lick and Lovey let's say, but with more bite than in the golden years and a fine propulsive drive that the handful of solo works had decidedly lacked. The guitars drip, purge, jostle and sting with their jagged edges, but Evan is the same incurable romantic as ever. A bit heavier, a bit less quick on his feet, but his voice retains intact the power it had in the good days, it nails you down, hurls you into a puddle of nostalgia without ever allowing you the flights of fancy it could never sustain anyway.

It's the sprightliness that preserves these sturdy ballads from the pitfalls of a mawkishness that the singer, clearly, shies away from almost fearfully. Here energy proves to be a genuine blessing, giving the album a vitality that a mere collection of minor-key self-revivals could never have possessed. There aren't really any truly memorable tracks – except perhaps "Pittsburgh", the real gem when it comes to melancholy suggestion – but the sheer craftsmanship ensures the record stays comfortably afloat, with the unmistakable trademark songs ("In Passing", "December") unable to dodge the traps of déjà entendu but still knowing how to win you over. The Lemonheads' brand of indie-rock is old-school but hardly past its sell-by date, gritty and surly enough yet equipped with happy reflexes that keep it, at least on paper, perfectly capable of meeting potential new admirers.

And as it goes on, Evan's more affable, languid soul comes to the fore, backed as ever duly by his new, rock-solid backing band: it's like finding an old friend, slightly aged, still wearing the same faded T-shirts from fifteen years ago. While "Let's Just Laugh" brings back the draughts and shadows of Car Button Cloth, skilfully blended with a touch of melodic lightness for the house's usual bittersweet fare, "Poughkeepsie" is the detour into country territory that simply couldn't be missing, yet it too falls in line with the bristly, rather noisy tenor of a passionate, proud record, lively and only occasionally a touch stiff, marking an encouraging rentrée.

Be that as it may, even fully recovered the character stays true to form: at the Nme Us Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, in April 2008, after performing acoustically, our man was seen throwing the "classic album" award he had just received for Ray into the trash can. Around the same time, a new collection of unreleased material was announced by Stevenson, but it would never see the light of day, just as the album more recently claimed by Ryan Adams never materialized, who evoked phantom Lemonheads supergroup recordings featuring Evan, Ben Deily, Juliana Hatfield and himself on drums. If these mirages soon evaporate, the band's final stretch did however bring to stores three further releases: the two dispensable live albums Hotel Sessions (2011) and If Only You Were Dead (2014), and above all the covers record Varshons, yet another testament to the singer's passion for reinterpretation, produced by Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes and released by Cooking Vinyl in the summer of 2009.

The crisp, good-natured opening of "I Just Can't Take It Anymore" (from beloved Gram Parsons) introduces, with a cleaned-up, affable Evan, a collection that is at least vocally more engaged, almost as if to exorcise the demons of loneliness, depression and failure. It ideally retraces the endearing, crumpled (but ultimately more at peace) imprint of Baby I'm Bored as well as, in a more offhand way ("Fragile"), the country repertoire of the Griffith Sunset Ep.

In terms of interpretation specifically, Dando perhaps delivers the most eclectic performance of his whole career, ranging from shadowy, sullen passages to brighter ones, passing through the sturdy rock-blues ambitions of "Dandelion Seeds", never afraid to let those stains, flaws and imperfections that have always been part of his artistic baggage show through regardless. The crepuscular Evan who reinterprets Townes Van Zandt's "Waiting Around To Die" leaves his mark, moving discreetly along the same path already trodden by Mark Lanegan's "I'll Take Care Of You", an imprint then restated with even greater conviction by a splendid "Green Fuz" – an end-of-days ballad, parched and lit by a lucid disenchantment – and by the vertiginous folk of "Yesterlove", a window flung wide open onto the songwriter's deepest moods, right up to the brink of caricature on "Mexico" (whose timbre, à-la Pall Jenkins, surprisingly brings to mind the Black Heart Procession).

Its more crowd-pleasing, populist side has an easy time of it with "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye", a highly emotive number that Leonard Cohen might seem to have tailored just for him, with the slender voice of actress Liv Tyler keeping him company (already his partner fifteen years earlier on the set of "Dolly's Restaurant" and his vocal foil on several other releases), while the result is far messier when the Bostonian is dematerialized by a vocoder and the honour falls to Kate Moss ("Dirty Robots").

Curiously, the true tour de force of a collection that's ultimately underrated is the genuinely convincing (and, needless to say, self-aware) reworking of a stripped-down, moving "Beautiful", taken from none other than Christina Aguilera's multi-million-selling repertoire (though the song is penned by Linda Perry), a mainstream-pop wink that the Lemonheads frontman gently strips bare and bends to his own unmistakable mood with astonishing ease.

For a moment this seemed like the last gasp of a controversial but dazzling career, one that has gradually faded over recent times.

His appetite, in any case, hasn't waned: Evan has launched an impromptu project called The Sandwich Police alongside singer-songwriters Willy Mason and Marciana Jones, a "Flying Nun tribute band", by his own account.

Just one Ep on Fat Possum ("Love Yourself", 2016) and a mini-tour alongside Courtney Barnett, before a silent oblivion. But we all know how these things go, the final word always seems the most remote of possibilities. All the more so for the soul and ringleader of yet another band that lived twice.

The Lemonheads name resurfaces first with the anonymous voice-and-guitar-only album Hotel Sessions, and then with a second covers collection, Varshons II, an album meant to warm up for a tour with Bevis Frond. It's a record utterly lacking in imagination, with songs that are short on bite and quickly forgotten. Even the covers of Jayhawks or John Prine songs, however respectful, feel all too schematic. Slightly more interesting are the noisy detour of “TAQN” (from the late-Seventies LA punk band The Eyes), the warm, caressing soft-rock reworking of Yo La Tengo's “Can't Forget”, and a stylistically more fitting “Things”, by Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg. Not enough to lend lustre to a collection that's less eccentric, but also less vital, than its near-namesake predecessor. An album that sticks closer to the orthodoxy of the references it tackles, but one that ultimately fails to excite. Meanwhile, Fire has taken over the Lemonheads catalogue from Atlantic, reissuing genuine gems like It's A Shame About Ray and Car Button Cloth.

The story of the Boston band is nonetheless always full of twists, with frontman Evan Dando the textbook example of an artist teetering between genius and self-destruction. Chronicles of the last twenty years tell of irreverent gestures towards critics and the establishment (in 2008 he threw his NME US Awards trophy in the bin), of disastrous shows (among others, the one at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2021, and the one in Zagreb in 2025). Having married Antonia Teixeira in 2024 and moved to Brazil, Evan Dando puts the Lemonheads name back in order: with Love Chant (2025), the American musician not only throws down a new challenge to himself — emerging from the darkness of heroin addiction — but also renews the band's mix of power-pop, gritty riffs and loosely melancholic melodies.

It only takes the opening notes of the exhilarating power-pop of “58 Second Song”, and the gritty, Dinosaur Jr-esque riffs of “In The Margin”, to be catapulted into a record where time seems to have stood still. Songs like the excellent, driving “Cell Phone Blues” (Evan Dando hates smartphones and doesn't own one) and the stripped-down “Marauders” could easily have come from the band's early albums, while the complex, shape-shifting “Togetherness Is All I'm After” delivers a thrilling 30-second guitar solo from J Mascis and opens the door to an intriguing blend of shoegaze and darkwave. It's hard not to notice how much deeper and more bittersweet Evan Dando's voice has become (“Deep End”), ready to take on the crooked rock-blues of the title track and the shambling acoustic ballad “The Key Of Victory”.

Riffs aside, with at least three songs worth remembering and two charming tributes (Troggs on “Wild Thing” and Roky Erickson on “Roky”), Love Chant is without doubt an artistic triumph for Evan Dando and his Lemonheads — a fine summary of what the band has given American rock, but also of what it might still have to offer in the future.

Contributions by Gianfranco Marmoro (“Love Chant”)

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