’93-’13: Into My Arms, The Lemonheads

A series highlighting great (but critically-ignored) songs from the past twenty years.

Evan Dando’s love affair with Australia is well documented, most thoroughly on the road film Two Weeks In Australia, or on either of his two most successful Lemonheads records: the immaculately stoned It’s A Shame About Ray and its follow up Come on Feel The Lemonheads. The way he sings ’post code’ still sounds like a man discovering the term for the first time, while hearing him talk about the term “paddock” on the documentary is a joy.

It’s A Shame About Ray (1992) signalled a stylistic change for the previously punky Lemonheads, and was sparked by an early Lemonheads tour down under where Dando met Half a Cow label ownerNic Dalton, who introduced him to Smudge frontman Tom Morgan. The two wrote a rush of songs that appeared on both albums, while Dalton soon joined the band as their bassist. And while Morgan co-wrote the majority of the tracks on 1993’s Come On Feel The Lemonheads, the album’s – and indeed the band’s – biggest hit Into Your Arms was penned by another Australian: Hummingbirds vocalist Robyn St. Clare. The track sat at the top of the Billboard Modern Rock chart for nine weeks; its breezy simplicity was hard for radio to deny, especially in the midst of Evan Dando fever, which saw him adorn the covers of teen magazines and Serious Music Journals alike.

The original version of the song appeared in 1990 on Billiepeebup: the excellent Love Positions record (a collaboration between St. Clare and Nic Dalton), and has since been covered live by Hole and Redd Kross. Oddly enough, that Love Positions record also features a track called Don’t Slow Down, which Simon Day later co-opted, reworked, and released as the #1 charting Ratcat single Don’t Go Now.