After years of writing, wandering, and starting over, Evan Dando returns with Love Chant (out via Fire Records on October 24th) — the first Lemonheads studio album in nearly two decades. Long in the works and shaped by shifting geographies and a cast of trusted collaborators, it’s a bold, melodic reaffirmation of one of alternative rock’s most distinctive voices.
Now based in Brazil, where much of the album was recorded, Dando’s relocation in recent years has offered a quiet shift in perspective — a chance to reset, reconnect, and finally bring these songs into focus. The result is a record that sounds both fresh and familiar: rooted in the hallmarks of The Lemonheads’ best work yet expanded by years of lived experience and new surroundings.
Arriving this autumn alongside Dando’s memoir, Rumours Of My Demise (out via Allen & Unwin on October 28th, AU), Love Chant, produced by Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Apollo Nove, draws together old friends and new allies. J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr), Juliana Hatfield, and Tom Morgan (as co-writer for ‘Deep End’) rejoin the fold, alongside producer Bryce Goggin (Pavement, Antony and the Johnsons), Nashville’s Erin Rae, John Strohm of the Blake Babies co-wrote and played guitar on “Togetherness” and Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond — a songwriter and performer on the swirling psych-folk gem “Roky.” Adam Green of cult New York favourites The Moldy Peaches also contributes as co-writer on the loose-limbed country detour “Wild Thing.”
Released today is second single from the record, “In The Margin” is a classic Dando composition: half-broken, half-beautiful, wrapped around a melody that disarms before it detonates. As Dando explains, “I wanted to have a riffy song, so I wrote riffs all over it. The body of the song was Marciana’s (Marciana Jones). It’s like a full-on 8th grade girl revenge song: ‘Stupidly I left the escape plans out so they could find my way.’”