“It’s a Shame About Ray” – The Lemonheads
(Words/music: Evan Dando and Tom Morgan, available on It’s a Shame About Ray, Atlantic 1992)

“It’s a Shame About Ray” fascinates me because it hints at a story more than it actually tells one.  Evan Dando laments someone without giving a specific reason why.  The best guess is that Ray is gone; it could be anything from Ray just leaving before Dando arrived to moving away to passing away.  It doesn’t really matter, because this lament ends up telling more about Dando’s narrator than about Ray.  Whether intentional or not, Ray becomes an excuse for the narrator reflect on himself.  He tells us that he’s “never been too good with names” twice, and in between he suggests that he’d be better off putting his feelings back with the cobwebs – hidden away in a place rarely touched.  Whether he’s an introvert or he’s extracting a lesson from Ray’s situation, the narrator sounds resolved to keep to himself for a little while.

Thankfully, the entire song isn’t as mopey as it sounds.  Dando sings with a deceptively melodic voice; he isn’t belting out the song like an arena rock singer, but he still projects his voice with a bright tone.  In an era where singers hid behind their hair and a wall of distortion, Dando puts his voice front and center (ironically with an introverted narrator).  Even with his generally upbeat tone, Dando finds just enough sadness in his notes at the right times.  Perhaps the moderate tempo helps to give the song a general melancholy quality around the end of the verses, but something about the melody keeps it from completely contradicting the lyrics.  It’s difficult not to let the music influence the story in the lyrics, but with so few clues in the narrative it doesn’t feel like too much of a leap to suggest that even while he laments Ray, he feels like it’s for the best (whether for him, for Ray, or for all involved).  Perhaps that’s just the optimist in me hearing what he wants to hear.

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