Album Review: The Lemonheads – Hate Your Friends

The Lemonheads’ debut album, released in 1987 is far away from the early 90s tracks where they made their name.  There’s not the slightest tinge of country about these tracks, there are 13 tracks over 24 minutes of mostly rather generic speed-punk.  Mainman Evan Dando alternates lead vocals with collaborator Ben Deily. 

 

Dando opens the album with the brief Eat It which sets the tone for a bunch of sub two-minute, three chord thrashes.  Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t set them apart.  Deily’s 3-9-4 feels like a cross between the S€x Pistols and very early Screaming Trees, and later he shouts his way through the punk version of Amazing Grace you always knew you needed.

 

The band are slightly more successful when the drop the pace a little, Deily’s Second Chance works in a kind of Jam-like way, but the one true great is the longest track here at three minutes.  Don’t Tell Yourself, with a swaggering riff and a dislocated, sullen vocal from Dando which works really well on a track made to play loudly.

 

It’s an interesting curio for Lemonhead completists (yes there are Lemonheads fans who can find some motivation to collect their releases), but inessential.

Album Review: Low - Trust

Not an album that jumps out of Low's extensive back catalogue, Trust sounded like a thing of dark, wintry beauty upon its release in 2002. Revisiting it now, it's hard to get beyond the truly wondrous seven minutes of opening track (That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace. Over Alan Sparhawk's clanking, echoey guitar, his and Mimi Parker's voices duet beautifully on this track. The chorus merely consists of them singing "Amazing Grace" and it truly is a joy to listen to. As Sparhawk sings "it sounds like razors in my ear".

It's followed by the faster-paced Canada, a kind of an indie-strum, but the momentum created by this and it's predecessor is ruined by the plodding Candy Girl, the only real misstep on the album. The remainder of the album consists of accessible Sparhawk sung strums (Time Is The Diamond, the banjo-featuring In The Drugs), short and sweet Parker-sung wintry ballads (Tonight, piano ballad Point of Disgust), Spector-like wall of sound tracks (Last Snowstorm of the Year, La La Song) and a pair of really angry tracks (The Lamb, John Prine). These last two feature crashing guitars, pounding drums and almost vengeful vocals, with the latter also featuring the tolling of a foreboding bell.

Shots & Ladders rounds things off, blissing out into a sort of snow-gaze ending. For me, this album is Low in their prime, showing them to be one of the finest bands around.