The Lemonheads – Love Chant – Album Review
by Killian Laher

This is an album many thought would never exist! It’s an album of 11 original songs penned by Evan Dando along with various collaborators, as the Lemonheads’ band lineup in the last 20 years or so has been fairly fluid.  Those looking for a return to their sun-dappled power pop sound of It’s A Shame About Ray will be disappointed, as the emphasis here is firmly on a heavier, rockier sound.  It opens with 58 Second Song. which actually lasts more than three minutes and sets the tone for the album, a sluggish, rocking sound, with Dando singing in a low register.

Deep End and In The Margin are riffy rockers of the type not generally associated with the Lemonheads, certainly not from their 90s heyday.  Wild Thing sounds a bit retro, with an identical tempo to The Troggs’ song of the same name, while Be In and Cell Phone Blues are a kind of mumbly rock with little of the charm of their past material, though the latter tune tries its hand at a ‘punk’ outtro.  Togetherness Is All I’m After is a decent, if a bit messy, rocker that will appeal to anyone who stuck with the band for 1996’s Car Button Cloth.  The one departure from this sort of thing is the penultimate track, Key of Victory, where he chills out for a bit for a dozy, acoustic ballad.

Lyrically, it’s fairly bizarre.  On the dark-sounding Marauders, he sings “I’m alive I’m alive, I said it twice, did you hear me” before later singing “turtle meat, chicken, corned beef, ham, duck, turtle meat” again and again over a horn backing.

If it’s Evan’s plot you’ve come for, I’m not sure it’s to be found here; it still appears to be lost.  Rock ‘n’ roll, yes, but good rock ‘n’ roll?  Not so sure!

Deep End