The Lemonheads "Black Gown"

In the interior of the Lemonheads’ first record since 1996, in the space behind the clear plastic CD-holder thing, is a black-and-white picture of a girl, in naught but her underthings, lying on a bed somewhere. The picture is apparently self-taken, too, so when you remove the CD for the first time, you just see a torso and legs underneath it, as if the CD was her head or something. And all you can do, if you’re 28 (29 next week) like me, is laugh a little bit, and then remember Evan Dando in the early 1990s. Dando was the pop-culture exemplar of the guy that each high school and dorm floor had one or two of—the impossibly good-looking stoner with perfect bone structure, but also the guy who would manage three or four “girlfriends” at once and write impossible-to-ignore moody pop-rock songs about longing and nostalgia and memory and probably those girls too. The guy who everyone tried to hate, but could never actually hate because he was essentially harmless and would screw himself over consistently with the fervor of a religious ascetic, and would finally put that on record with Car Button Cloth. Over a decade hence, there are many ways to approach the Lemonheads, but the way I do is as the archetype of alternative nostalgia. With that lens, as you know, comes a decent amount of envy—I’m pretty sure I’m not the only guy who secretly wished he could get with Juliana Hatfield just once, and write/cover a bunch of songs that people listened to when they were smoking pot or having sex for the first time. On Dando’s first excursion under the Lemonheads moniker since ‘96 (my sophmore year in college), he smartly (or dumbly, I don’t know) picks up exactly where he left off, and caused me to realize that I’d essentially given up on the band with him, which means that right when the first song kicked in, I was sort of transported back to the south side of Indianapolis in 1993 for a minute, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. If you’re playing the same type of music you were playing a decade ago, there’s not a chance it won’t be nostalgic. The first song is called “Black Gown” (file removed at label request, although they mailed me the CD), and it’s Dando rejuvenated: guitars that still sound like late 80s Boston, lyrics sung from a bedroom floor, trying with all of their sleepy might to end a relationship without sounding like a complete dick—especially the point when everything drops out completely halfway through, and we’re left with Dando’s weary voice saying “If it ain’t fixed, don’t break it.” And then you go back and look at the picture behind the CD, and you realize that you probably know exactly when it was taken.