Review Summary: Listen to your friend Gibby Haynes - he's a cool dude.
Evan Dando has always been the kind of bandleader to do things his own way – after gaining fame with their cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” he not only became the most famous thing about the band through his nouveau-celebrity antics (befriending Oasis, hanging out with Courtney Love, various other career killers), but he also managed to sabotage the band’s relatively short career with his crack addiction. It wasn’t until 2005 that Dando assembled a new lineup to continue on the name and a new record, one that was a pure blast of enjoyable guitar-based alternative.
It’s not exactly weird, then, for Dando to throw away everything that worked on his last effort to reshuffle the deck for this year’s Varshons, a covers album with a whole new group of Lemonheads. Several, actually – it’s not uncommon for a whole different band to play one song and another fresh group to take on another. Gone is The Lemonheads retro-‘90s rock, replaced by Dando’s fondness for down-tempo country-rock, spearheaded by producer Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers) and the close friends’ affection for obscure songs.
The great thing about the covers here, though, is that they’re not “Mrs. Robinson” – that is, the average music fan will not know all or even half of the tunes chosen here, making Varshons the professional studio equivalent of those cool mix tapes your friend might make from time to time, except with Dando’s weathered vocals and country bent. Amazingly or not, this combination manages to transform every song into what comes off as a fully formed Lemonheads record.
Opener “I Just Can’t Take It Anymore” is a perfect example of how this experiment works to the Lemonheads advantage. Gram Parsons’ is the ideal touchstone for Dando’s western-tinged vocals, and the song’s easy-going vibe fits in perfectly with the group aesthetic, particularly Haynes’ understated production. The occasional female backing vocal here, a twinkling guitar flourish there; Haynes and Dando, two clearly outsized personalities, mesh surprisingly well throughout Varshons. The duo nail it more often than not, matching G.G. Allin’s murder ballad “Layin’ Up With Linda” to a bar-band backing chorus and a rollicking guitar solo, or fleshing out Townes Van Zandt’s “Waiting Around To Die” with Dando’s earthy vocals and a well-placed fiddle.
Even better are the songs that deviate from Dando’s country-rock fetish – July’s “Dandelion Seeds” is rip-roaring rock with a riff to match any of the shredders on his previous record, while “Yesterlove” by Sam Gopal floats along a quietly stylish raga drum rhythm while Dando’s vocals paint a haunting picture of psychedelic loss.
As with any covers album, there are a few missteps in taste. Wire’s “Fragile” transformation into an acoustic strummer takes away from the tune’s immediacy, while Kate Moss’s (?!) lead vocals on “Dirty Robot” by Arling & Cameron only worsen the song’s entirely out-of-place synths. Luckily, there’s a masterfully done slice of alt-country like “New Mexico” (by the wonderfully named ***Emos) for every Kate Moss misdemeanor, and not every celebrity showcase fails so miserably – Liv Tyler on Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” is charmingly supportive behind Dando’s whispery pleas.
Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” closes out the record in surprising fashion, perhaps the album’s best-known song becoming Dando’s totally. The echoes of feedback and Dando’s entirely earnest vocals turn a girl-power anthem into a pleasingly simple acoustic folk ballad, one devoid of any hipster irony.
The song selection could be considered elitist, the arrangements mere genre exercises utilizing Dando’s penchant for country flavor, but Varshons doesn’t try to make itself any more than two friends worshipping their favorite songs. It just so happens that what may have started as mere homage shifts itself, through good production decisions and a clear-cut love for these tunes, into a uniquely dynamic Lemonheads effort.
