Lemonheads - It’s A Shame About Ray: Deluxe Edition

Short and sweet made longer

When Evan Dando wrote the songs that would make up 1992’s fleeting Ray album, he was little more than a struggling, if beautiful, also-ran on the US alternative rock scene. Sure, he’d put out four albums already, but none had touched on the downright infectiousness of anything on …Ray.

At well under half an hour, the original album was a slightly sickly-sweet paean to love that never “made it”, all self-deprecating and bruised, but always so damned catchy. Annoyingly, the record company released their cover of Mrs Robinson, against the group’s wishes, but they subsequently “blew up”, to use college parlance, and things snowballed. My Drug Buddy and Bit Part are up there with the country pioneers, such as Gram Parsons, that Dando idolised, but the mechanics of the repeated three-chord alt rock sound dated now.

Better are the original acoustic demos tacked on the end – especially the sublime Shaky Ground; a DVD of Australian tour high jinks, with a candid commentary from Dando, adds to the nostalgia. Come On Feel…, from 1993, outshines anything on …Ray, but this is an interesting juncture indeed, charming in its sunny naïvety.

Warners | tbc

Reviewed by Jake Kennedy
<< Back to Issue 349