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For a band who owe much of their success to the art of the cover version, and yeah, let’s not beat around the bush here, It’s a Shame About Ray wasn’t exactly setting the charts alight before their Lemon-lovin’ Graduate-coverin’ selves took the mild-hearted Simon and Garfunkel hit “Mrs. Robinson”, turning it into solid gold for the second time round and certifying Evan Dando as grunge pin-up of 1992.

From “Mrs. Robinson” to “Luka”, “How Will I Know?” to “Fade To Black”, Evan Dando just loves other people’s music as much as his own, so it’s not without precedent, nor without surprise, for The Lemonheads to record an album of cover versions (the act of which I call ‘treading water in an empty swimming pool’).

Varshons be the name of the record, ostensibly some Southern retardation of the word “Versions” (but don’t quote me on it) and it’s due for release on Cooking Vinyl in the UK on June 15. The rest of the world will have to hit Evan up for a copy or something. I really don’t know as yet.

The idea for the covers record was inspired, says the press machine, by Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, who for years has made mixes for his old pal Evan. “Making a good mix is an art, and Gibby has it down,” says Dando. “I thought it would be fun to share these songs with other people like he shared them with me. So I picked the ‘greatest hits’ from his mixes and covered them, along with a few other songs I always wanted to play.”

Varshons was produced by Haynes and features Dando along with Vess Ruhtenburg (bass) and Devon Ashley (drums). The track selection is something of a surprise for long-time Dando fans expecting him to revisit past encore favourites. His well-documented love of Gram Parsons though does take pole position with “I Just Can’t Take It Anymore” but the rest of the album veers from less surprising covers of material by Townes Van Zandt and Leonard Cohen (with the help of actress Liv Tyler on backing vocals) to the punk lunacy of GG Allin and the garage rock of Green Fuz.

Since anyone is yet to hear this masterpiece, I’ll steal the final quote from the press release and take their word for it. “Filled with obscure nuggets, the tracks on Varshons cut a wide swathe, jumping from early British psychedelic to Dutch electronica and like all good mix tapes, you never know what is coming next.”

Full tracklisting as follows :

1.     “I Just Can’t Take It Anymore” (Gram Parsons)
2.     “Fragile” (Wire)
3.     “Layin’ Up With Linda” (G.G. Allin)
4.     “Waiting Around To Die” (Townes Van Zandt)
5.     “Green Fuz” (Randy Alvey & Green Fuz)
6.     “Yesterlove” (Sam Gopal)
7.     “Dirty Robot” v/ Kate Moss (Arling & Cameron)
8.     “Dandelion Seeds” (July)
9.    “Mexico” (Fuckemos)
10.    “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” f/ Liv Tyler (Leonard Cohen)
11.     “Beautiful” (Linda Perry)

* Original artist in parenthesis

And yes, it is that “Beautiful”. Dear god, Evan does Christina Aguilera. This really is shaping up to be a special record, and if that track in particular isn’t in the running for ‘cover of the year’ I don’t know what is. It’s also great to see Evan and Liv are still friends after all these years, you know, with Liv losing her virginity to Evan and all. Or so the story goes…