Life doesn’t come with do-overs. For once, Evan Dando doesn’t seem to mind. In a recent interview with The Guardian, the Lemonheads’ bandleader, who quit doing heroin in 2021, expressed no regrets about his past: “I think some people were supposed to take drugs, and one of them was me.” For Dando, this nonchalance is perfectly in character. In the early ’90s, the Boston native’s rise to semi-stardom was predicated as much on his infectious pop melodies as his dippy, pretty-boy persona: a perfect foil to Kurt Cobain’s tortured artist. Although this typecasting isn’t exactly unfounded—onstage temper-tantrums and drug-fueled liaisons with Johnny Depp and Kate Moss have earned him this reputation—it’s complicated by Dando’s music. On the title track of the Lemonheads’ 1992 magnum opus, It’s a Shame About Ray, he packages his own unknowability into one perfect line: “If I make it through today, I’ll know tomorrow not to leave my feelings out on display.” Even at the height of Dando’s fame, what lay beneath his dopey smile was anyone’s guess.
Released in October, Love Chant—the Lemonheads’ first non-covers album in nearly 20 years—is considerably less opaque than the band’s earlier offerings. While the record is no tell-all (if that’s what you’re hoping for, check out Dando’s new memoir instead), it is an undeniably self-conscious comeback, manifesting the existential angst of middle age in sludgier-than-usual riffs, sudden switchups, and some of Dando’s most self-reflective lyrics to date. “The strategy of life is that it’s gone before you know it / And when you laid it on the line, baby, don’t blow it,” he coos over churning guitars and glacial percussion on “Togetherness Is All I’m After.” Whether or not a Lemonheads comeback was highly anticipated, it seems that the stakes have never been higher for Dando and his bandmates.
Even when mulling over subjects as heavy as his own mortality and cultural relevance on Love Chant, Dando sounds more alive than a number of his better-adjusted fellow elder statesmen of indie rock. Given that every other rising act these days is indebted to either country or power-pop—genres the Lemonheads championed long before they were de rigueur for alt-rock acts—Dando could easily have produced a cheap, inconsequential piece of nostalgia-bait. Instead, Love Chant is the most experimental record of his career thus far, crystallizing his fluency in subgenres ranging from psychedelic rock (“Togetherness is All I’m After”) to alt-folk (“The Key of Victory”).
Most of Dando’s wildest swings on Love Chant pay off. Arguably the album’s catchiest tune, the twangy singalong “Cell Phone Blues” proves how well his hooks hold up when he leans all the way into his country affectations. On the other end of the spectrum, the tape-scratching jam “Marauders” manages to fashion a hodgepodge of brass horns, moog synthesizer, harmonium, and nonsensical babbling into a genuinely majestic-sounding finale. It’s semi-ironic that Dando wonders whether there’s “anything left for [him] to say about shit” on the latter track; its arrangement, among the most delightfully quirky in the Lemonheads’ catalog, is indicative of a creative who’s plenty dried-out but far from washed-up.
But Dando hasn’t quit all of his old habits since we last heard from him. Like every Lemonheads record other than It’s a Shame About Ray, Love Chant occasionally lacks the discipline and focus Dando’s more than capable of, resulting in some snoozers. The narcotic swirl of guitars on “Be-In” seems to challenge even Dando to keep his eyes open—his incoherent mumbling might as well be a sleep-talk tape. He sounds far more awake on the mildly catchy title track and “Wild Thing,” but that doesn’t matter much, as he has nothing interesting to say on either. It’s frustrating that the lyrics aren’t just shallow but also boring, as Dando’s talent for writing good “bad” lyrics is truly impressive. (I’m thinking now of that line from “Being Around”—you know, “If I was a booger, would you blow your nose?” At least that was, uh, thought-provoking?) Dando may be a reputed master of “throwaway charm,” but “Love Chant,” “Wild Thing,” and “Be-In” are just throwaways.
That said, there’s plenty on Love Chant for fans of the Lemonheads’ classics to, well, love. The not-so-aptly named opener, “58 Second Song,” kicks things off with big, dumb power chords and half-dumb, half-profound aphorisms that typify the band’s best pop-rock dynamos. Centered around the undeniable sort of hooks that’ve always come easily to Dando, the grungy anthem “Deep End” and bratty kiss-off “In the Margin” could easily pass for ’90s outtakes if not for Dando’s time-worn baritone. On the former, veteran Lemonheads collaborators Juliana Hatfield and J Mascis respectively contribute dynamic harmonies and an acidic electric guitar solo. “I don’t know any more than I did all those years before,” Dando admits on the urgent, introspective closing track “Roky.” Love Chant leaves no doubt that he has a ways to go on both his personal and songwriting journeys, but it proves that he’s already well on his way, looking to the past to push his sound—and self—forward. After so many years of stasis, that’s a triumph in its own right.
