Dando Lion

Vanities

Here he comes now, a barefoot wraith in a tom pair of jeans, drifting through the lobby of the Chateau Marmont hotel toward his favorite chair. The women behind the hotel desk, who have surely seen it all here, blow kisses, temporarily ignoring their current customer—who happens to be Ric Ocasek of the Cars. Evan Dando waves back, then looks down at his toes. "They like me here, I guess," he says in a cheerful mumble. "I played a concert in the lobby for the hotel people, and now they kind of know who lam." Dando, 26, the Boston-reared son of a 60s fashion model, sings and plays guitar for the band the Lemonheads, and is pretty much the official cutest guy in alternative rock V roll— the mop-haired boy your kid sister wants to take to her junior prom. When he sang his goofy pop-punk version of Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" last year, he even brought teenagers' mothers to their knees.

With the exception of a cult underground hit, "It's a Shame About Ray," the Lemonheads are best known for their off-the-wall cover songs: Suzanne Vega's "Luka" and Michael Nesmith's "Different Drum," among others. Come On, Feel the Lemonheads, out this month, is the album that should break Dando out of the pretty-boy MTV ghetto to which he has been relegated; it's a solid collection of buzzy pop that combines Dando's melodic sensibility with the edgy grace of the legendary Byrds primo, Gram Parsons. Rick James and Belinda Carlisle step in for guest shots, along with the Lemonheads' usual gueststar vocalist, Juliana Hatfield. This time, Dando wrote or cowrote almost every song himself.

JONATHAN GOLD