The kids in my tiny uberliberal prep school loved The Lemonheads before they were cool, and as more than just local heroes — the band had been formed in the same hallowed halls, and the oldest of our peers could still remember their presence among us. The music was perfectly adolescent, too: raw and visceral, full of feedback and fuzzy guitars; it wasn’t much more ragged than our own amateur output, and it came complete with frontman Evan Dando, who presented a grungy kind of everyteen charm, his long hair hanging down to the strings just like our own.
Being so close to the band’s origin made it hard to gage their popularity; to us, they were ours. But looking back with less localized eyes, there’s no question that Lemonheads co-founder Dando was a defining character in the distinctively hardcore, fuzzed-out East Coast branch of the burgeoning alt-rock scene which preceded and then paralleled the grunge movement of the early nineties. For a very short period, when grunge was in vogue and the Lemonheads covers of Suzanne Vega’s Luka and Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson were storming up the college charts, Dando was linked to everyone from Courtney Love to Oasis; he was even named one of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people.
Dando’s “slacker sex kitten” days would ultimately prove as short-lived as the Boston grunge scene itself. But a decade and a half later he still has wide appeal, at least among the music bloggers. Some of this is surely due to the diversity of his contributions to a seminal period in modern music landscape — Dando reinvented the Lemonheads many times over his relatively short career, using numerous peers from the scene, including members of the Blake Babies and Dinosaur Jr., and his influence is audible in much of the movement. It’s also true that his solo output is relatively consistent, raw and almost alt-country, a sound which has its own kind of appeal among a certain kind of audiophile — it says what it needs to that one of his earliest official post-Lemonheads turns, a duet with Juliana Hatfield, was a Gram Parsons cover.
But it’s hardly a stretch to suggest that Evan Dando’s appeal is as much for his story as it is for his sound. In many ways, the man represents the same kind of greasy, undersung, haunted type as the similarly stripped-down Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, or Townes Van Zandt: the earnest, ragged troubador peering through the wall of depression and pain, looking for authenticity in the usual self-destructive ways. That he fell from such grace, so quickly, is but a part of the mythos.
In the end, Dando, unlike so many of his spiritual singer-songwriter kin, survived his dark crack cocaine days, though he released virtually nothing between 1997 and 2001 save a few guest spots, such as the aforementioned alt-countryrock cover, or his oddly orchestral-pop duet with folk-child Kirsty MacColl. But his comeback would ultimately be an acoustic one, and a good chunk of the solo work he did produced in and after these dark days are true blue singer-songwriter alt-folk, weary acoustic grunge covers of otherwise upbeat pop and rock songs, surprisingly powerful when given voice by a musician haunted by the double demons of hope and doubt. Here’s a representative set, typically ragged and sparse.
Pushing purchase links is a bit of a challenge for today’s entry: many of today’s songs live their life as unlabeled web-sourced outtakes and in-studio bootlegs, and folk fans will probably not find comfort in the output of the Lemonheads themselves. But any discriminating audiophile with diverse taste really should have The Lemonheads’ It’s A Shame About Ray, Dando solo album Baby I’m Bored, and Gram Parsons cover album Return of the Grievous Angel in her collection. Coverbloggers should also keep an eye out for Varshons, a promising-sounding all-covers album scheduled for a Spring 2009 release from Dando’s latest incarnation of The Lemonheads.
Oh, and here’s a Holiday Coverfolk bonus. Tis the season, after all.
