The Lemonheads: It's A Shame About Ray 12" (30th Anniversary)

At the start of the 1990s, before ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’, Lemonheads were likeable enough, personable. They had a handful of great fuzzy pop tunes influenced by the same bands everyone was influenced by (Hüsker Dü, The Replacements), and a couple of lickable covers, including a particularly evocative one of Suzanne Vega’s ‘Luka’. Their singer Evan Dando loved Howe Gelb’s ramshackle Giant Sand and the beautiful, tragic, music of Television Personalities’ Dan Treacy and Gram Parsons. His band were sweethearts: a photographer and a best buddy/pastry baker — they were the fifth best band in Boston. It wasn’t an insult. There were a lot of great bands in Boston back then.They might’ve been called ‘grunge’ if he’d hailed from the other side of America. But the band were on the verge of breaking up. Work on their fourth album (their major label debut on Atlantic), 1990’s under-praised, and under-sold, ‘Lovey’ resulted in tour fisticuffs.Then, the sun-kissed, languid ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’