It's long been a subject of opinion and analysis: Can offspring really ever outperform their parents?
Think about it: Was John Quincy Adams really a better president than his father (or who really cares)? Or, on the rock music side, is Julian Lennon anything more than a pale shadow of his late father? For that matter, do any of John Lennon's or Paul Mc-Cart-ney's efforts really stack up to their Beatle efforts?And can the concept be applied to bands and their "children"? On the alternative-rock side, for instance, the latest is Boston's Lemonheads. Formed in the late '80s as a hard-core punk-rock trio, the band "matured" its sound into a nearly rustic power-pop, and members of the Blake Babies, Bullet Lavolta, Squirrel Bait and Australia's Hummingbirds have done time in the lineup. Now, some of the former and current Lemon-heads have surfaced in the side project Godstar - in which they do actually outperform their source band if the new Lemonheads album is used for comparison.
GODSTAR; "Sleeper" (Taang!/Half a Cow). * * * 1/2
Current Lemonheads bass guitarist Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan (who has helped write much of the most recent Lemonheads albums with Evan Dando) lead this Australia-based group, which doesn't draw so much from the Lemon-heads as from the bands that influenced them.
Both Dalton and Morgan share lead vocal and guitar chores, though Dalton - a relative unknown talent before - dominates in the songwriting area. Obvious influences include the Velvet Underground, the '80s Minneapolis punk-pop scene (Husker Du and the Replacements) and the Beatles, though Godstar doesn't sound too much like any particular one of them.
Dalton's slightly monotone vocals (which don't get too nasal, fortunately) work wonders on brisk acoustic pop/rock like "Bad Bad Implications," "Stranger" and "Single," while drummer Alison Galloway sings the all-too-brief "Ersatz."
Surprisingly, for a debut effort, "Sleeper" is coherent, intelligent and well-played. It's easily one of the best first albums released this year and perhaps 1993's best power-pop release.
LEMONHEADS; "Come on Feel the Lemonheads" (Atlantic). *
The wonderful "It's a Shame About Ray" may have spelled the beginning of the end for the Lemonheads.
Maybe it's the fact that the band rushed out a follow-up to its major-label breakthrough (which took three years to release) so quickly (this time it only took months to write the material), or maybe it's the glossy production given the Lemonheads by famed '70s record producers the Robb Brothers, but "Come on Feel the Lemonheads" is a dud by any other name.
Despite a few rollicking numbers (mainly "It's About Time" and "Down About It"), most of the new material falls flat, due to uninspired performances (especially "Into Your Arms") or just plain dumb lyrics and concepts ("Big Gay Heart" and "Being Around").
Worst of all are the two versions of "Style," the second of which ("Rick James Style") includes the presence of the smarmy '70s funk/
soul singer. Better luck next time, guys.
RATINGS: four stars (* * * * ), excellent; three stars (* * * ), good; two stars (* * ), fair; one star (* ), poor, with 1/2 representing a higher, intermediate grade.