A transitional plant with stumbling blocks that Evan Dando’s band shows in transition and a rock career in crumbling.
The problem of this album was less a musical than one of the changing zeitgeist. The Lemonheads were traded as stars in the waiting room for two or three albums; The beautiful Evan Dando was included in MTV-Celebrity, Cameo appearance in “Reality Bites”. The band seemed ripe for the very big career at the latest with the catchy and energetic songs on Come on Feel (1993). But after five or six of a whopping years, electricity guitars in 1996 simply no longer seemed interesting. On the one hand, this was due to the market mechanisms that the music industry seemed to have contracted every garage band that acted musically somewhere in the area of tension between the replacements and nirvana.
Above all, however, British artists set: inside the impulses, which was not preceded by the Lemonheads, a small, somewhat acclaimed cover version of “Live Forever” is among the bonus tracks of this album. Whereby: that Car Button Cloth was waved through by audience and pop criticism without too great emotions was also due to other things. The Lemonheads on the two previous albums with Juliana Hatfeld and Nic Dalton were relatively stable. They were out, the group now consisted of their boss and a few rental musicians, only the drums used Dinosaur-Jr. drummer Murph a friend of the house.
It becomes more interesting when Dando lets the PowerPop PowerPop be and lets us look into the abysses of his soul
The biggest hit of the album, “The Outdoor Type”, is a cover version of the Australian friend: inside Smudge. The song, like the fleet “If I Could Talk i’d Tell You”, moves in the proven paths of the two previous albums, without reaching their force. It becomes more interesting when Dando lets the PowerPop PowerPop be and lets us look into the abysses of his soul. “Losing Your Mind” is such a song: “I’ve tied a tied a tied knot and tried to unie it. Just Can’t Decide IF I Should Lie Or Tell the Truth and Try to Hide It, ”sings Dando here, shortly you have to think of“ Ride With Me ”, the core of the fourth Lemonhead album Lovey published in 1990.
Elsewhere, the album looks towards Country (“Knoxville Girl”) and punk (“6ix”). The final “Secular Rockulidge” finally drags itself through wide, epic sound landscapes before a sound takes over the supremacy, the Hardcore New York design crosses with classic heavy metal.
In short: the album is quite shot
In short: the album is very shot, you would like to have a video recording at hand that shows the faces of those responsible at Atlantic Records when they first heard these songs. It is hardly surprising that Dando’s time at the major label went with this publication. Car Button Cloth appears retrospectively like a transition. Dando from Dando, the rock star, becomes Dando, the songwriter. Not every idea works, on the other hand, this is the interesting thing about this man to this day: he is the king of shit, from his refusal to follow the rules, new variants of the game are created. Anyone who has ever been at one of his concerts knows that.
The double LP-Reissue underlines this thesis with plenty of bonus material. Including an even more catchy version of “The Outdoor Type” (the reviewer recommends: please also listen to the original from Smudge) and B-pages, such as the wonderful Jacobites cover “Pin YR Heart”, which is also on the album would have done well. In any case, Dando shines here with numerous foreign compositions, two of them formed the last official Lemonheads single before the comeback 2006; Actually, they don’t have much to do with this album: “Balancing Act”, in the original from the Volcano Suns and the Jimmy Webb-Track “Galveston” life primarily due to the tangible Heartland rock guitar from always Lemonhead John P. Strohm.
The only previously unpublished track is “Arise”; A reminiscent of Eighties rock ballads, well, rock ballad, from Dando on his next publication, the Soloalbum Baby I’m Bored (2003), derived the song “Rancho Santa Fe”. What is missing, on the other hand, is a track that everyone spoke about when it came to this album. Somewhere in the grass behind the Glastonbury stage, Dando had written a song with Noel Gallagher at the time. It was called “Purple Parallelogram”, even found himself on early celebrities, but was then withdrawn at the behest of the British. If you are looking for, you will find it on the Internet – and then find that the cooperation reads more interesting when it ultimately sounds.
You can find out which albums were still published in January 2025 via our monthly publication list.