Baby I'm Bored
In his thirties and no longer the poster boy of the post-grunge generation, Evan Dando returns a wiser and seemingly chastened man onBaby I'm Bored, his first studio album since theLemonheads' 1996 finale,Car Button Cloth. His well documented difficulties behind him, it's heartening that Dando has returned with a set of genuinely lovely songs. Visceral, vital, and yearning,Baby I'm Boredboasts a wealth of gems. The opener, "Repeat," is vulnerable yet quietly resolute; "It Looks Like You" is as spectral and plangent as theByrds; "Hard Drive" rehabilitates that widely despised genre, the list song. "The Same Thing," on the other hand, hints at mental turmoil ("I can't believe how far I slipped"), while "Why Do You Do This to Yourself?" berates a kamikaze party animal over the most muted!  of acoustic strums. There is resolution in "All My Life," which gratefully delineates newer, sounder perspectives ("All my life I thought I needed the things I didn't need at all"), while the giddy, bucolic closer, "In the Grass All Wine Colored," is as pristine and pure as a baby's conscience. Members ofCalexico,Giant Sand,Come, andSpacehogchip in support, but the focus is fully on Dando, an artist reborn, restored, and far from bored.--Ian Gittins