The Lemonheads arrive at Northampton’s Roadmender on 3rd October 2026 celebrating four decades of music, bringing with them a catalogue that has soundtracked a sizeable part of my youth.
The Lemonheads @ Roadmender
With Evan Dando, this was never likely to be a slick, carefully choreographed nostalgia tour. On paper, though, the ingredients are everything you could want from a The Lemonheads set: plenty from It’s a Shame About Ray and Come on Feel the Lemonheads, alongside the covers and musical detours that have always been part of Dando’s musical DNA. Ramones, Elvis Costello, Michael Nesmith and Edwyn Collins all find their way into the evening, alongside a perhaps slightly over-generous helping of Smudge.
And when the songs click, they really click. Big Gay Heart, Rudderless, Confetti and Divan are particular highlights, while Different Drum remains one of those songs capable of instantly transporting a listener somewhere else.
What strikes me most is just how instinctive Dando remains as a musician. There are moments when a song begins and decades of muscle memory seem to take over. The melodies are there. The guitar playing is there. That unmistakably loose The Lemonheads sound is still there.
For a few minutes at a time, everything else disappears and you are reminded exactly why these songs, and the man who wrote so many of them, still mean so much to people.
Around halfway through, the show changes shape completely. Dando moves into a more acoustic setting, taking centre stage with just his guitar and the songs.
In some ways, it plays directly to his strengths. Stripped of everything else, you can hear just how naturally these songs still live within him. There is nowhere for the songs to hide and, equally, nowhere for Dando to hide either. The second half feels more intimate and unpredictable, but also considerably more exposed.
Having seen Dando perform many times over the years, this feels different. The dry wit and slightly chaotic charm that once filled the gaps between songs are noticeably quieter. Comments sometimes become mumbled fragments that disappear before they have really begun. At times he seems distant, only for another song to start and that extraordinary musical instinct to suddenly switch back on.
That contrast becomes one of the more striking elements of the night. There is a vulnerability to Dando’s performance that feels more noticeable than on previous occasions I have seen him. Between songs he can seem distant or lost in thought, but once the guitar kicks in, those familiar instincts return and the music seems to pull everything back into focus.
It would be easy to view the evening through the prism of the headlines that have surrounded Dando, but doing so would also risk missing what is actually happening on stage. This is neither spectacle nor car crash. There are simply moments that feel fragile, sitting alongside others that remind you what a naturally gifted songwriter and musician he remains.
And perhaps, as an audience, that is as far as we should take it. Nobody standing in that room really knows what is happening in somebody else’s life, and it is not our place to diagnose or speculate. What we can judge is the music. People have bought tickets because these songs mean something to them. I have too.
And there is genuine joy in hearing them again. Forty years into The Lemonheads story, Rudderless can still fill a room. Confetti can still make you grin from its opening chords. Big Gay Heart remains gloriously bruised and beautiful. And when Different Drum arrives, it is difficult not to be swept along with everyone else.
Maybe that is the strange contradiction at the heart of this show. This is not necessarily the strongest performance I have seen from Evan Dando, but there are flashes that remind me exactly why I have kept coming back. Underneath the rough edges remains an instinctive musician and a catalogue of truly brilliant songs.
Perhaps that is what an anniversary tour should ultimately do. Not pretend that nothing has changed, but remind you why the music mattered in the first place. For all the concern I feel watching him, there are still moments, particularly when it is just Dando, a guitar and a room full of people who know every word, when he disappears into those songs and everything else falls away.
Forty years on, that music clearly still means an enormous amount to the people standing in front of him. You just hope the person who created so much of it is looking after himself, too.
Live review & photography of The Lemonheads @ Roadmender, Northampton, by Henry Finnegan on 3rd October 2026. Instagram: @finneganfoto | Facebook: @finneganfoto
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