If it’s really better to burn out than fade away, what can be said about burning out, fading away, then coming back to do it all over again? Evan Dando, front man of the never terribly exciting but never disagreeable Lemonheads, spent much of the 90s on alt-rock’s A-list before getting tangled up in some rather public personal problems and quietly deciding to take a break for a few years. His 2003 solo comeback, Baby I’m Bored, may not have set the industry on fire, but it did prime the pump for the return of his band. The new self-titled Lemonheads full-length on Vagrant is exactly what Dando loyalists have been waiting for: a record that’s such a return to form it’s as if it was pulled out of deep freeze. It doesn’t hurt that Dando recruited Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez of the Descendents to help kick out the jams–a pastime he probably learned to value all over again during his stint as a Rob Tyner stand-in a couple years back. –Monica Kendrick
