Evan Dando & The Lemonheads

By the time of the release of the band's It's a Shame about Ray in 1992, Evan Dando's Lemonheads were an established … and experienced … major label band. After toiling for several years in the indie rock wilderness as a hardcore punk-oriented trio, recording a handful of albums for Seattle's Taang! Records, personal and creative tensions between the members broke the band apart, with Dando retaining the Lemonheads name and signing with Atlantic Records for the release of 1990's Lovey.

With It's a Shame about Ray, the Lemonheads had effectively become the Evan Dando show, and the singer/songwriter's vision fueled the band's sound. The album's mix of punk attitude, folksy arrangements and pop vibe benefited from Dando's casual delivery and slacker ethos, as well as from the input of Julianna Hatfield, whose own solo career would be launched by the album's modest success. With the early-90s ascent of "alternative rock," the Lemonheads seemed to stand on the brink of massive mainstream commercial success.

Instead, the attention and acclaim afforded the Lemonheads, along with Dando's new status as a teen "sex symbol," only seemed to fuel his insecurities, and the artist turned towards increasingly dangerous levels of drug abuse. The band's 1993 album, Come on Feel the Lemonheads, although a moderate sales success, was a confused, scattershot affair, and did little to improve upon the loyal Lemonheads fan base. The band wouldn't file another album for three years, the messy Car Button Cloth derailing any career momentum the band might have enjoyed, sending Dando into the dark night of pop culture obscurity.

The release of the two-disc "collector's edition" of It's a Shame about Ray provides an excuse to revisit the cornerstone of Lemonheads' alt-rock reputation. Listening with fresh ears better than a decade-and-a-half after the fact, It's a Shame about Ray is a pretty damn good collection of folk-leaning, alt-rock lovelies, the chemistry of Dando, bassist Hatfield and drummer David Ryan creating a finely-crafted balance between the trio's energetic punkish tendencies and songwriter Dando's increasingly retrospective wordplay.

Kicking off with "Rockin' Stroll," the song features a nifty descending guitar riff, some tasty acoustic strumming, a driving drumbeaten rhythm and a fine bit of vocal gymnastics. "Confetti" has a vaguely British feel to it, like early Kinks or the Who, filtered through the Jam, with inventive guitar work, multi-tracked vocals and drummer David Ryan's blustery kitwork. The title track displays Dando's skills as a lyricist, the song an introspective, acoustic-based, mildly-rocking heart-on-sleeve moment with an appropriately sad-faced vocal performance. Dando's ode to mind-alteration, "My Drug Buddy," reveals glimpses of stately Americana (think The Band) between its delightful vocal harmonies and gentle, pastoral soundtrack.

The exceedingly charming "Bit Part" is equal parts minimalist, low-fi slacker ethos and grand wall-of-sound rocker, with a swaying beat and up-front guitar-strum. Based on a friend of the band, "Alison's Starting to Happen" is disarming cookie-cutter rock vamp not dissimilar to some of what the Replacements or Soul Asylum or the Goo Goo Dolls were doing at the time, with enough heart and soul to pull it off joyously. "Kitchen" is a hand-clapping melodic rocker with an uncomplicated soundtrack and bits-and-pieces of instrumental exotica (including bongos, sirens, and random bursts of six-string energy).

The band's pop-punk cover of the Simon & Garfunkel hit "Mrs. Robinson" is included here, as it was on subsequent re-pressings of the original album. Many fans look at the inclusion of this literal "13th song" as upsetting the delicate balance of the album's original intent, but I'd disagree. The Lemonheads recorded the song to accompany the reissue of the classic film The Graduate, and although this remake may smell of corporate manipulation, the band does a spirited reading nonetheless, with hearty drumwork, punctuations of stabbing guitar, and an affecting Dando vocal turn.

There are a number of bonus tracks provided this "collector's edition" of It's a Shame about Ray, most of them previously unreleased demo versions of songs from the album that would be attractive mostly to hardcore fans. The obscure voice-and-guitar track "Shaky Ground" was originally released on an EP and deserves a wider audience, the song's sparse instrumentation and trembling vocals creating an emotional work that stands out from the crowd.

Of the demo tracks included here, several work quite well as stripped-down performances – the title track, for instance, gains more emotional impact from the strong guitarwork and sculptured vocals. "Rockin' Stroll" sounds like a lower-fi Violent Femmes doppelganger, whereas "Ceiling Fan in My Spoon" is so muddy and muddled that it sounds less like a major label demo and more like a bedroom recording by a talented, aspiring rocker. Although slightly hollow-sounding, the British Invasion vibe of "Confetti" and the song's lovely lyrics are only amplified and focused by the understated recording.

One of the keys to the modest success of both Dando's compositions, and It's a Shame about Ray altogether is the concise brevity of the songs: only two of the original twelve poke their heads above the three-minute-mark, and five songs clock in at less than two minutes. In this case, the minimalist framework concentrates the listener's focus on Dando's accessible lyrics, on the instrumentation, and on the vocals, allowing Dando's natural charisma to shine through the grooves.

Nowhere is this more apparent than on the set's accompanying DVD. Titled "Two Weeks In Australia," this rock-n-roll travelogue presents an untarnished, up close and personal view of the band through off-the-cuff interviews, tour video footage, in-store performances and music videos. The universal appeal and onstage electricity of the band is readily apparent when watching Dando perform acoustically in front of an audience of young females in a record store…the looks on the girl's faces capture the essence of Evan Dando and the Lemonheads like a fly in amber.

Dando would resurface in the new millennium with a solo acoustic tour and accompanying live album, returning with a full-fledged 2003 solo album, Baby I'm Bored. Evidently feeling invigorated by all the creative energies he was experiencing, Dando formed a new version of Lemonheads with All/Descendents members Karl Alvarez and Bill Stevenson, recording a critically-acclaimed self-titled album in 2006 with a guest appearance by The Band's Garth Hudson. Harkening back to the original pop/punk/folk-rock sound of It's a Shame about Ray, it proved to be too little, too late … although with a talent the caliber of Evan Dando's, you can never really count him, or the Lemonheads, out of the game. (Rhino Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy It's a Shame about Ray from Amazon.com)