Live Review: The Lemonheads

Turnout for the highly anticipated Lemonheads gig at the Gov was a little lower than expected on this fine Thursday evening - although this wasn't totally surprising given the sheer volume of events on offer in Adelaide in 'mad March'.

Immigrant Union welcomed us in with their brand of sweet jangly Americana. The Melbourne band features a nice mix of dual vocalists - Bob Harrow and Dandy Warhols drummer Brent DeBoer (now living in Australia) both on guitar and vocals. While they may have sounded a little rusty at times, the essence of a great band was there. Their 2014 album, Anyway, which includes contributions from former band member Courtney Barnett, made its way successfully from the merch stand to the car stereo and received a decent spin on the drive home. Highly recommended.

After a lengthy delay, The Lemonheads took to the stage and, with a quick, "Hello, how's it going?", launched into Down About It from the Come On Feel The Lemonheads album. It was a blistering intro and set a pace that rarely let up for the rest of the show, covering 28 songs in just under one hour, 20 minutes.

Evan Dando is currently in possession of a straggly beard that doesn't do his fine features any favours, but his vocals are still strong and his guitar playing was outstanding. Banter was minimal, almost non-existent in fact - "That song was about a blue panel van," he said at one point. When his eyes weren't wedged firmly shut, he seemed to be staring somewhere up into the ceiling, avoiding eye contact with the crowd. In fact, all four musicians on the stage looked rather bleary-eyed - perhaps they all had hay fever.

There's been so many members of The Lemonheads over the years, it was difficult to determine who was in the touring band this time around. At some stage the drummer and bassist exited stage left, leaving singer and guitarist to play a half-dozen songs as a duo, which made a nice change of pace and allowed Dando to perform some fine guitar solos.

There were plenty of fan favourites on offer tonight. All the classic songs such as The Great Big No, It's A Shame About Ray, It's About Time and If I Could Talk I'd Tell You were there. Other highlights included the Neil Young-like New Mexico from the 2009 covers album Varshons - with the short encore seeing just one song, Being Around, performed before they were done.

And while there was no sign of their iconic cover of Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson, we'll forgive them, because they did play the sublime The Outdoor Type, a true story about music reviewers everywhere.