This is a slightly misleading one. Not a band effort, more a recording of Evan Dando from 1992/1993 era made in Australia. The songs are mostly from It’s A Shame About Ray and the at-the-time-unreleased Come On Feel The Lemonheads, plus one or two that didn’t make it.
The songs are all played by Dando on an acoustic guitar. One or two of these sound quite good (Paid to Smile, It’s About Time) but the quality of the recording is poor, barely bootleg standard, with audible hiss throughout. The recordings could certainly have been cleaned up, that’s for sure.
Hearing these songs in this stripped down manner puts more focus than desired on Dando’s lyrics, which at times could try the patience of a saint eg Style (“don’t wanna get stoned, but I don’t wanna not get stoned”). Previously unheard tracks (Superhero, And So The Story Goes) add little to the proceedings.
A whole album of this, albeit a short one (all 14 tracks clock in at 36 minutes) gets a little repetitive and tedious and the real question is what is the point in this release and why now? After 2009’s covers album Varshons, this equally adds nothing to the Lemonheads’ recorded works, merely reinforcing the impression that Evan Dando was basically a complete chancer who stumbled upon one great album in It’s A Shame About Ray and milked it for all it’s worth.
http://www.meg.ie/shame/
