The Lemonheads

Varshons 2

Evan Dando declared grunge pop’s least prolific songwriter. Nothing says

‘all outta tunes’ more than making a covers album, doing arse-all for 10 years and then making a sequel. We’d assumed The Lemonheads’ addled supremo Evan Dando was now the house mumbler at the Dunwhingin home for grunge casualties, but Varshons 2 finds him compos mentis enough to revisit the indiest and countriest corners of his record collection in search of more of the borrowed magic of Mrs Robinson, Frank Mills and The Outdoor Type.

A decade in the wilderness has only mildly withered his slick stoner croon, and there’s sizzle to his take on The Bevis Frond’s synth-grunge Old Man Blank that suggest Dando isn’t quite the dead-eyed burn-out we might have thought.

That said, there’s a DIY feel and bouts of slacker tomfoolery to Varshons 2; Lucinda Williams’s Abandoned is laced with psych guitar wails, The GiveGoods’ Unfamiliar is actual sci-fi reggae, and it sounds like Dando gives Natural Child’s bar boogie tune Now And Then a surprise blow-back in the middle eight.

Dando is most confident when tackling acoustic folk obscurities, or classics that would sound fantastic even if a tone-deaf racoon played them on cowbell (Take It Easy; Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Straight To You). Now, these new songs of yours, Evan. We’ll wait.

Mark Beaumont