Album Review: The Lemonheads - Lick

By 1989 the Lemonheads were still trying to find their sound.  Their third album, Lick, features mostly heavy rock.  Opener Mallo Cup is a propulsive rocker with a spindly riff, but was probably Evan Dando’s most accomplished song to date.  Almost as strong is the countrified strum A Circle of One which has quite an unusual melody and sees Dando in fine voice.

More typical are Dando’s brief speed rockers Glad I Don’t Know, Come Back D.A. and Ben Deily’s 7 Powers and Anyway which add little to the album really.  The Italo-metal Cazzo Di Ferro is pretty appalling really.

The most well known track on the album sees them take Suzanne Vega’s Luka and rock it up with heavy riffs, and a ‘loose’ treatment of the lyrics, and it works really well.  But the rest of the album is too hit and miss to have any lasting impact.

Album Review: The Lemonheads - Creator

The Lemonheads' second album came out in 1988. It zips along, 13 tracks in just over half an hour. Ben Deily is very much to the fore, taking more of the lead vocals than Evan Dando. The band has slowed down a bit, despite the presence of Dando's speed rocker Clang Bang Clang. Out is a decent mid tempo rocker, while Deily's Come To The Window has a dippy charm.

They each take an acoustic track, Dando covers Charles Manson's Your Home Is Where Your Happy, while Deily plays sensitive original Postcard. A cover of Kiss track Plaster Caster adds little to the proceedings. So here the band are still some way off discovering their sound.

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.