Juliana Hatfield & Evan Dando @ The Mercury Lounge, NYC 9/30/10

Between the Lemonheads, a Blake Babies reunion gig in 2001, and many, many solo performances, I've witnessed Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield onstage in various incarnations roughly a dozen times, but I have yet to see them together (and frankly, if you live outside of Boston, you probably haven't either).  However late in 2010, the once romantically linked "alterna-hunk" Dando, and his on again/off again '90s collaborator Hatfield doubled up for a short run of acoustic shows in the northeast.  I didn't have the opportunity to partake in any of them, which is why I was in luck when I found this rather well recorded audience show from the Mercury Lounge in New York on the last day of September.  As was the case with many a cynical outsider at the time, the Blake Babies reunion a decade back was deemed a nostalgia cash-in.  I'm sure the this collaboration elicited a similar reaction, but for those of us who opt to prioritize the music, these shows served as a more than welcome early holiday present. 

Evan and Juliana split the song quotient almost evenly here, though it's Jules who "carries" the show, so to speak, with  a more pronounced effort than her counterpart.  Both eschew a lot of obvious singles and should-have-been hits, and all the better I say, considering there's so little to argue with on this set list, which even dips into a few Blake Babies tunes, including the Earwig-era "Rain." And of course, there's the requisite banter, and a smathering of covers, like the Dead Kennedy's chestnut "Too Drunk to Fuck," and one of Evan's longtime favorites, Gram Parsons "$1000 Wedding."

01. Paid to Smile
02. Choose Drugs
03. Rain
04. Hospital
05. Butterflies
06. Cells (Teenage Fanclub cover)
07. Down About It
08. Waiting for Heaven
09. All My Life
10. When You Loved Me
11. What is Wrong
12. Ride With Me
13. Bottles and Flowers
14. Brain Damage
15. Bit Part
16. Tourist
17. Too Drunk to Fuck
18. The End of the War
19. $1000 Wedding
20. It's About Time
21. chatter
22. Evan
23. chatter
24. Baby Gets High (Madder Rose cover)
25. My Drug Buddy

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