Early on, the Boston-born Lemonheads were a noisy postpunk guitar band, distinguished mainly by surreal and delicious covers like Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” and Michael Nesmith’s “Different Drum.” The band’s last album, the first-rate “It’s a Shame About Ray,” sold nearly a half-million copies, turning Dando into a magazine cover boy and landing him on People’s “50 Most Beautiful” list. Success meant the singer had to put up or shut up: to establish his credibility or be written off as a purveyor of bubblegrunge.
Four out of five dentists will tell you that “Come On” is bad for your teeth. There are certainly guilty pleasures here. “Rest Assured” and “Down About It” are great, brisk guitar rockers. “I’ll Do It Anyway” is a giddy pop trifle that Dando originally wrote for Belinda Carlisle (she declined, but sings backup here). Dando has an easy, bedroom voice–he doesn’t sing as much as whisper in your ear–but he’s capable of extreme lapses in judgment. “The jello Fund” is a 15-minute suite: fake jazz piano, Hendrix-style guitar noodling and studio outtakes interspersed with eight minutes of dead silence.
In interviews Dando has spoken movingly about his parents’ knotty divorce, as well as about his continued bouts with sleepwalking and night terrors. But what we get here is not substance, but “Style”: Don’t wanna get stoned, don’t wanna get stoned, but I don’t wanna not get stoned. The cri de coeur of Generation X, or a load of crap? Your call. At his best, Dando seems like a canny, tuneful songwriter with his ears open to all sorts of influences: punk, pop, country. At his worst, he just seems lazy. ln the press materials for “Come On,” he says, “‘Style’ was written in five minutes as a joint went around.” Geez, really?
The Whigs’ new album, “Gentlemen,” is not exactly a drug-free zone. in fact, singer Dulli makes his intentions clear on the title track: Unlock the cabinet…I’ll take whatever you got. With “Gentlemen,” the Cincinnatibased Whigs deliver a venomous, meticulously crafted variation on the theme of Breaking Up Is Hard to Do. Dulli’s grainy voice sounds positively ghoulish. And, unless you’re in the mood for subtlety, his lyrics have a sinister honesty: The victim doesn’t want it to end/Good. I get to dress up and play the assassin again…If I inflict the pain, then baby only I can comfort you. “Gentlemen” might not be autobiographical, but now that it’s out Dulli may have a hard time getting dates.
So Dulli’s no alterna-hunk. Still, just when you tire of the prickly, distorted guitars, he and the Whigs know enough to offer piano and cello. just when you think he has wrung all the drunken, violent weirdness out of love, he sings “I Keep Coming Back,” an old soul tune that suddenly sounds creepy and masochistic. The Lemonheads have stuck to the map, but the Afghan Whigs have ventured into parts unknown.
