Evan better than the real thing

"Anyone who came to see me at Glastonbury '95 -- I'm sorry I missed the gig." It's just a throwaway line, but we get Dando's message. In the mid-Nineties, when the former Lemonhead was everyone's drug buddy, he looked set to crash and burn.

"Anyone who came to see me at Glastonbury '95 -- I'm sorry I missed the gig." It's just a throwaway line, but we get Dando's message. In the mid-Nineties, when the former Lemonhead was everyone's drug buddy, he looked set to crash and burn.

Now he's back, joking that he'd spent the interim "doing monitors for Enya", and telling us to check out David Beckham's autobiography.

Like a prettier Neil Young, or a less vapid Leo DiCaprio, Dando is still a rare confluence of looks and talent. Once, he would sport a girlie dress and pigtails; tonight he's in a blue T-shirt bearing the legend "Del Bomber". His sticker-studded acoustic guitar is hooked up to a Marshall amplifier, and every now and then he kicks on a fuzz-pedal to take him from Jekyll to Hyde. It's a little reminder that he first came to the fore at the height of grunge.

The old tunes zip past, Dando scarcely stopping to draw breath in the first half-hour. We get "It's a Shame About Ray", "Into Your Arms" and "My Drug Buddy", each of them evincing a songwriting talent that easily outstrips that of your Toploaders and Lowgolds. Front of stage, there's a sea of doe-eyed girls who seem lost in private, Evan-related reveries. "Big Gay Heart", though - an accepting, conciliatory song about a homosexual-on-heterosexual crush - is a reminder that all are welcome at the church of Evan.

The title of Dando's new album, Is the Grass All Wine Coloured?, suggests that pharmaceuticals may still be an indulgence. The three or four new songs he plays from it sound special, straight off the bat, and they're received with a mixture of excitement and reverence. "Hard-drive" is a simple list song, its title seemingly a metaphor for the human brain and what it chooses to retain, its sweet chorus a melody built around the phrase, "Have you ever felt yourself in motion?" Further in, "All My Life" is even better, Evan now joined for three-part vocal harmonies by his friends Ben Lee and Ben Kweller.

The coup de grâce comes just before the encores. One of last year's oft-quoted lyrics was the "nicotine, Valium, marijuana..." shopping-list on Queens of the Stone Age's "Feel Good Hit of the Summer". Wise to that, and keen to align himself with rock's new aristocracy, Dando delivers a bowdlerised, 30-second version that begins: "Nicorettes, Listerine, Head & Shoulders". It's a great little skit, and proof, if it were needed, that Dando still has wit and invention to spare. Welcome him back with open arms.