Taking to the road on a 30th anniversary tour of early 90s classic It’s A Shame About Ray, The Lemonheads bring the nostalgia roadshow to a packed Academy where the audience are united in affection for this music. The entrance song is a recording of Cole Porter‘s Miss Otis Regrets, a song covered by Evan Dando as a B-side to the 1993 single ‘Into Your Arms‘, after which Dando treats the crowd to a singalong solo acoustic set, featuring audience favourites The Outdoor Type, Divan, Being Around and Into Your Arms, as well as Lovey-era track Ride With Me., Hard Drive from Dando’s solo album Baby I’m Bored, and Misfits cover Skulls.
Joined by a band, the main event is a blast through It’s A Shame About Ray (minus of course later addition to the album Mrs Robinson, never Dando’s favourite). For a teenage fan of the album it is great to hear it played in full and to be so lost in nostalgia. For the brief thirty-odd minutes it takes to play through the album, I could be 13 again, headphones on playing the album on the backseat of my parents’ car. It’s great to be reminded just how good this album is.
The album is followed by a full band set drawing on some more classics – Down About It, Hospital, Stove(!), and If I Could Talk I’d Tell You are there, along with John Prine‘s Speed of the Sound of Loneliness, from 2019 covers album Varshons 2.
With their last original music having come out in 2007 (album The Lemonheads) followed by two covers albums each a decade apart, The Lemonheads have become something of a nostalgia project in recent years. It’s a guise Dando wears well though, and he is very much beloved by the Bristol audience tonight.