- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
With a little luck, this collection of mostly obscure covers could, on a smaller scale, do for Dando what the Rick Rubin-helmed American Recordings did for Johnny Cash.
-
This sense of adventure ties Varshons to those earliest Lemonheads records, but the group marries that spirit to Dando's exceptionally intuitive interpretive skills, turning the album into a bit of a rough, unpolished gem.
-
Dando’s at it again, with a whole album full of mix-and-match covers which comfortably sit just on the right side of bizarre.
-
Dando misfires when songs don't suit him--Wire's 'Fragile' loses its tension--but this is worth an hour of anybody's time.
-
Whether tackling Broadway showtunes or John Prine, or Simon and Garfunkel, the laconic alt-rocker nimbly transforms songs until they sound like they could be his own. That pixie dust extends to Varshons.
-
Varshons is an admirable stopgap that proves that there is life in the old dog yet.
-
This is no standards collection and Dando isn’t singing the hits. The album is instead a sort of late-career triumph for the Lemonheads.
-
FilterThough it's no breakthrough, Varsons serves as a nice holdover until the new set of material we've been promised. [Summer 2009, p.100]