Live Review: The Lemonheads @ Knitting Factory, Brooklyn 1/11/12

Seeing your heroes in person is always a strange experience. Sometimes they’re everything you’ve idealized them to be, and sometimes they live up to the rumors or persona built around them. Usually though, they are somewhere in between. This is pretty much the experience I had Wednesday night with Evan Dando of The Lemonheads.

-Alex

 Standing amidst a sold out crowd at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn I could tell from the conversations around me that this was going to be a very, very unique show. Ticketed as the band performing a set of their amazing 1992 album, It’s a Shame About Ray, the show drew fans of all ages. It was obvious that older fans definitely outnumbered younger ones as when people should have been dancing (or at the very least pogo-ing), they simply stood. I was surprised by this especially when the band tore through a raucous version of “Alison’s Starting to Happen”. This was amongst my favorite songs of the night, along with “Rudderless” which incited a quiet singalong from the audience. 

My gripes against the show aren’t limited only to the audience members lackluster interest, though. After taking the stage (solo) at 10:30, Evan proceeded to play many songs (mostly covers) with an acoustic guitar, stopping in the middle of a song when he could no longer play it (or got bored with it). It did feel exclusive and fun, like sitting in his living room and watching him play. However, even Dando could tell the audience was getting restless when he said something along the lines of “the rest of the band will be out to play Ray soon”. Once they did, the mostly quiet audience livened up a bit, hooting and cheering them on. Even then there was a lot of false starts for the band, they’d start one song just to stop it a few seconds later because it was too fast or too slow or Dando just wasn’t feeling it for some reason. 

To be fair, Dando mumbled something about their drummer only being with them for two days, and the band finished every song, even if it took a try or two. Also, even though you can tell Dando has aged a bit by looking at him, his voice is exactly the same as the one we’ve all come to love, and I have to commend him for singing a whole album without taking as much as a sip of water. After closing out the album, Dando was once again the solo band member on stage. This time he played a ton of songs from Come on Feel the Lemonheads and Car Button Cloth. Standouts during this second stripped down performance of the night were “Favorite T” and “The Outdoor Type”, but my favorite song of the night was probably his version of Big Star’s “Nighttime”. 

Unfortunately, not many of the ticket holders got to see Evan Dando perform this. Content with seeing what they paid for, or bored with Dando’s ambling bar guitar performance, many people left before Dando even left the stage. I’m not sure he noticed or cared. I guess I can say that I am glad I at least didn’t have this experience with seeing The Lemonheads live.