Well, thanks to a frankly improbable convergence of personal, professional and financial crises, this is a full two weeks later than I’d promised. Sorry about that. Without further ado, it’s time to talk about ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’.Rhino Records have reissued the Lemonheads 1992 fifth album. I liked the Lemonheads back when this first came out, I remember them as a likeable, relatively inoffensive rock band with some catchy tunes. The video for ‘Mrs. Robinson’ was on TV a lot, if I remember right - in fact, along with A-House’s ‘Endless Art’, I probably saw the video at least twice a week – both were favourites of Irish youth culture show, ‘Jo Maxi’.In fact, if you’re a fourteen year old trying to segue your way from pop to alternative rock, you could do a lot worse than ‘Ray’. It’s lighter in tone and sound than most of the rock albums we now associate with the first half of the nineties. ‘Ray’ is one of those albums that never seems to be get mentioned in a ‘Greatest Of The 90s’ list, but is completely defining of the era, maybe more so than ‘Nevermind’ or ‘Ten’. ‘Ray’ spoke to a more realistic outlook, a better example of what we were really like, or at least as teenagers aspired to be like in college. We might not have all known a ‘Jeremy’ who shot himself because he was bullied, but we all knew a girl (or guy) like the one in ‘My Drug Buddy’.Dando was the perfectly representative nineties frontman for this – he had the Richard LInklater/Kevin Smith slacker look and outlook; there’s no sense of deprivation or abuse, just a goofy, likable guy who wants to hang out with cute girls and listen to punk and get high with them. There’s no call to arms, no demands for retribution – just an emotional outpouring from a guy whose life isn’t perfect, but hey! Who gives a f****k?I can’t tell if the argument over whether the album has aged well is moot or not. The songs do stand up surprisingly well after sixteen years – better than some of the stuff on ‘Nevermind’ or ‘Ten’ or ‘Rage Against The Machine’. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a better or worse album – “Ray’, like the others, is completely of its time. It’s completely representative of 1992, and that’s probably all it was ever intended to be.If you’ve no interest in the music of the nineties, this is probably not the album for you. It’s not a timeless album – it’s a very, very good, even a great album but it is from 1992, and that shows. The references, lyrically and musically, fit it in completely with the pre-‘Friends’ generation, and are absolutely in keeping with that. It’s not difficult to see how ‘Ray’, while not always considered a ‘grunge’ album, heralded a softening of the grunge sound and the Lemonheads, particularly on this album, paved the way for the successes of more pop oriented rock acts like Counting Crows, Live and Matchbox 20.The upside though, is that you’re getting one of the albums that inadvertently defined the early nineties with a brighter outlook than you ever got from Cobain, Vedder, De La Rocha or Cornell ever showed us.This special edition comes with nine demo versions of album tracks, the b-side ‘Shaky Ground’ and DVD of the previous VHS release ‘Two Weeks In Australia’. I’m only reviewing the CD part here, and to be honest the demo tracks are far from essential. But HMV (at least here) have it for only slightly more than the regular version, so it’s well worth the money.Tracklist:Rockin’ StrollConfettiIt’s A Shame About RayRudderlessMy Drug BuddyThe Turnpike DownBit PartAlison’s Starting To HappenHannah & GabiKitchenCeiling Fan In My SpoonFrank MillsMrs. RobinsonShaky GroundIt’s A Shame About Ray (Demo)Rockin’ Stroll (Demo)My Drug Buddy (Demo)Hannah & Gabi (Demo)Kitchen (Demo)Bit Part (Demo)Rudderless (Demo)Ceiling Fan In My Spoon (Demo)Confetti (Demo)