The Lemonheads - Shepherds Bush Empire

Since they broke into the mainstream with It’s A Shame About Ray they’ve given us Come On Feel... and more recently the slightly disappointing Car Button Cloth. It has been a while since the Lemonheads have played live over here, though their previous appearances are still pretty fresh in our memories, especially their infamous Reading set in ‘95 when Evan Dando seemed to have lost the plot entirely. Following this he became a temporary groupie of Oasis during their pre-Definitely Maybe days, another sign of his demise perhaps.

On the night, Evan Dando looked the same as he did during the Come On Feel period and they played quite a mixed set. It started off with a few songs from the most recent album, mosh alongs like It’s All True and the brilliant If I Could Talk I’d Tell You. Dando sang in his typically laid back style, even on the faster heavy songs, whilst perfectly understating his guitar fretting. The opening chords of the poignant melancholy of It’s A Shame About Ray slowed things down and was followed fittingly by the mellow marvel of My Drug Buddy. Allison’s Starting To Happen and The Great Big No were a jump along delight, however Big Gay Heart was a bit too country and western for my liking. An impromptu acoustic duet with the lead singer of Aussie support band, You Am I, was decided upon which got all of their gathered fans creaming their pants although bearable is as far I can go in describing it. After the initial set, Evan returned for a bit of solo acoustic strumming that trailed off into meandering nothingness, but thankfully the rest of the band decided to save him and joined in for a second more intense encore.

Tonight was quite rightly a ‘best of’ set, giving something back to the loyal fans, though they did manage to forget all about their ticket to commercial success, Mrs. Robinson.

Jaso