It was astonishing to walk into that coffee shop in Sydney and see Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan sitting there. Dalton was almost indiscernible behind a huge, heterogeneous beard, enjoying his complex coffee drink as if some religious adamancy were attaching him to it. Morgan sat opposite, and I couldn’t see his face, but a certain professional, almost anxious disposition kept his body language very still, and collar bound tightly. Both men gave the impression of accomplishment but sustained struggle, like a person in power, or a parent, trying to see the good in everything, knowing that, whatever they uncover, whatever they absorb, they’ll have to relay it right away, to dole it back out into this cold, fast world, to earn their keep. And I hadn’t thought that humility still existed. But it makes sense, walking into this flashy place, with a girl covered in piercings over here, a guy with a mohawk over there, that Dalton and Morgan would be the types to talk a little softer. And it makes sense when you consider how It’s a Shame about Ray (1992) is the only Lemonheads album that’s even LISTENABLE, let alone great or classic. (For the record, I’d slot it into the intermediate “great” portion of the spectrum, as catchy, Yo La Tengo-inspired indie-style rock, kind of goofy like the Violent Femmes.) And sure, it’s the ’90s-y stuff that doesn’t age well: the hanging out with freaks, the girl “gettin’ her tit pierced,” the “There’s still some of the same stuff we got yesterday,” and, truth be told, all of this epochal fanfare does seem quintessentially American, the apple not falling for from “Providence, Rhode Island,” as it were. It was never that stuff, anyway, that was going to cheer up my sister when she was a depressed closet lesbian in Indiana in 1995. Now, the question is, how could a creation of such a sunny, desert-laden continent be so expert in soundtracking rainy South Bend days in late October? Sounds like a County-City Building issue to me.
..
<script async src=“https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-5127494401132808”
crossorigin=“anonymous”></script>
..
<!– Google Tag Manager –>
<script>(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({‘gtm.start’:
new Date().getTime(),event:’gtm.js’});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!=‘dataLayer’?’&l=‘+l:’’;j.async=true;j.src=
‘https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id=‘+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);
})(window,document,’script’,’dataLayer’,’GTM-5KV22KW’);</script>
<!– End Google Tag Manager –>
<!– Google Tag Manager (noscript) –>
<noscript><iframe src=“https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-5KV22KW”
height=“0” width=“0” style=“display:none;visibility:hidden”></iframe></noscript>
<!– End Google Tag Manager (noscript) –>