The Lemonheads: O2 Institute, Birmingham – live review

The Lemonheads
Birmingham O2 Institute
Monday 27th September 

The Lemonheads put in a rich, raw and riveting performance of their high-water mark It’s A Shame About Ray, alongside a typically brilliant Evan Dando acoustic set and choice selections from the band’s back catalogue. Sam Lambeth reviews

Evan Dando hunches across the stage dressed like a trucker that’s just truncated his long drive with a stop at a greasy spoon. If his jacket is wonderfully ragged, his voice is anything but – he spoons smooth, sorrowful baritone over the doleful The Outdoor Type and wistful Being Around.

Playing solo acoustic before a full band set, this is Dando’s bread and butter. Able to turn the likes of Skulls by Misfits into a delicate ditty and Into Your Arms into a lilting lullaby, his hangdog croon and carefree strumming just need a barbecue and a hot dog to complete the full effect. It’s almost a shame – if you pardon the pun – that the rest of the band have to join him. Almost. While Dando has dedicated most of his live career to performing most of It’s A Shame About Ray, tonight is a chance to hear The Lemonheads’ classic 1992 album in toto (minus Mrs Robinson, natch).

Ably backed by bassist Farley Glavin and Swervedriver drummer Mikey Jones, the trio intricately balance crunchy fuzz with beautiful restraint, something that made …Ray both a stellar example and an amazing outsider of the grunge movement it was released in. The beauty of the It’s A Shame About Ray is its deceptiveness – rarely has an album delivered such succinct, arresting vignettes that possess both sweet abandon and deeper resonance. The chiming Confetti spins sugary melodies while allegedly being about Dando’s parents divorcing. The sauntering, almost elegiac My Drug Buddy (“I’m too much with myself, I wanna be someone else”) feels sad and celebratory. The suitably fleeting Bit Part is a hymn of frustration and ignorance.

The bulk of …Ray was written in Australia and although tonight takes place on a rainy night in Birmingham, you can feel the sun-kissed pavements over the contemplative The Turnpike Down and the lazy afternoons of Hannah & Gabi. The latter half of …Ray is powerful, irresistible harmonies and chugging distortion making the punk rush of Alison’s Starting to Happen, the groovy Kitchen and the rollicking Ceiling Fan In My Spoon as strong a closing salvo as you will find.

The band leave the stage and Dando gets his biggest singalong of the night with Frank Mills, a song taken from the musical Hair that is perhaps now better known as a Lemonheads staple. A snapshot of a story over a strummed acoustic, it’s poetic, funny – Dando, for reasons unknown, says Frank resembles the drummer from “Shed Seven” as opposed to The Beatles – and heart-wrenching. The Lemonheads in a nutshell. The rest of the set is dedicated to choice cuts from Dando’s remarkably consistent, if disappointingly sporadic, back catalogue. Three songs aired from 1996’s Car Button Cloth – Hospital, Break Me and Tenderfoot – are bruised and beaten but retain Dando’s ear for melody.

Stove, taken from 1990’s Lovey, was perhaps the first sign Dando was switching from punk thrash to more fertile, fragile territory, and remains one of the most heartbreaking pieces of prose written about a kitchen appliance. Closing with 1996’s brilliant If I Could Talk I’d Tell You, Dando and the band are offstage before people have barely had a chance to clap. Still wonderfully askew, still in possession of shampoo agnostic hair and still controlling a room with his deep drawl, Dando reminds us of his gift for spinning songs of unassuming but powerful beauty.

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The Lemonheads are touring the UK. For full details, visit their website.

All words by Sam Lambeth. Sam is a Birmingham-based journalist and musician. More of his work for Louder Than War is available on his archive. He also runs his own blog and his music can be found on Spotify.

Photo credit: Barry-Brecheisen – kindly provided by PR.

Source: louderthanwar.com