The Dandy Warhols Albums (8)
What The Critics Say
The Dandy Warhols opened their 2003 album, Welcome to the Monkey House, with a brief, snide dig at record industry greed and illogic that ran, in part: "When Michael Jackson dies, we're covering 'Blackbird.'" The line was obviously intended as a flip reference to Jacko's control of the Beatles' publishing rights -- of course, "Blackbird" is a rather fitting song to record as a eulogy, though it's doubtful that the Dandys considered that at the time. But fate had some amusingly ironic, if insignificant, tricks in store when, six years later, Jackson's unexpected death occurred mere weeks before the release of an alternate version of that same album -- a version whose initial release had been prevented by the Dandys' own industry woes, and which featured all of the same songs except for the sadly newly relevant titular ditty. The story is that the bandmembers took the tracks (which they had co-produced with Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes) to be mixed in New York by Russell Elavedo (D'Angelo, Common, the Roots), but the results were rejected by Capitol Records and shelved in favor of a new version mixed (apparently without the band's involvement) by British pop engineer Peter Wheatley (Sugababes, Girls Aloud, Sophie Ellis-Bextor), which was released to mild but vaguely disappointing success and ended up as their second to last album for the label. The differences between the two versions, as fans heard once the Elavedo mix (dubbed The Dandy Warhols Are Sound) was self-released by the band in 2009, are roughly what one would expect after comparing the two engineers' prior clientele rosters. Not that these mixes make the Dandys sound like a grittily organic hip-hop/soul outfit on the one hand, or a glistening chart-pop act on the other -- this is essentially a rock & roll album either way -- but Sound is notably more stripped-down and spacious, with fewer of the synthesizers and electronic underpinnings that gave several Monkey House tracks their noted (and arguably prescient) new wave/synth pop vibe. This helps to bring the songs closer to the rootsier, dirtier, and somewhat dubby approach of their previous albums, although it's hardly comparable to the gloriously noisy dronefests of their first two -- even if shifting "(You Come In) Burned" up, to open the album with a slow-building epic, is a nice nod to Dandys tradition. But yes, in a word, Elavedo's version is less poppy, even if in some ways it actually feels cleaner and more direct, since fewer layers of sound allow the songs to stand more fully on their own merits. (This is particularly true of easily overlooked numbers like "Heavenly" and "Rock Bottom," though it's not always necessarily to their benefit.) The big pop numbers -- which are now mostly slotted in a clump at the beginning of the record -- lose almost none of their tight, hooky appeal. Listening to both mixes side by side, song for song, the differences are readily evident and fairly striking -- though there are no substantive changes to the actual songs themselves. Oddly, though, listening to either version in full makes it much harder to notice any prominent differences, perhaps because of how well the tracks are incorporated into each version's distinctive sound-world. Ultimately, the differences between the two are not all that great. Sound may have a slight edge over the originally released version of this material, if only because it's truer to the band's initial intentions, and Dandy diehards will certainly find it worth checking out, but more casual fans who already own Monkey House can probably skip it unless they're looking for an intriguing lesson in the nuances of mixing. (The "new song," "Pete Int'l Spaceport," is merely four minutes of ambient effects washes, and should hardly be considered a selling point.) ~ K. Ross Hoffman, All Music Guide
'Earth to the Dandy Warhols'
Release Date 8/18/2008
Tracks 13
Label Beat The World
See Album Tracklist and Review
'...Earth to the Dandy Warhols...'
Release Date 1/1/2008
Tracks 13
Label Etch N Ske
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
On ...Earth to the Dandy Warhols..., Courtney Taylor and company do indeed seem to be a little more down to earth than they were on the very uneven Odditorium or the Warlords of Mars, debuting their own label with a much more consistent collection of songs. That's "consistent" in terms of quality -- the Dandy Warhols always seem the most comfortable when they're hopping from sound to sound, mood to mood, instead of sticking with just one approach for an entire album. If their eclecticism can be considered a signature Warhols sound, then ...Earth to the Dandy Warhols... has it; it often feels like an update on Thirteen Tales from Modern Bohemia. The band roams from driving, psychedelic rock on the opening track, "The World the People Together (Come On)" -- which, with its trippy strumming and lyrics like "The love that you give is exactly the love that you take," sounds like a '60s love-in shot into space -- to "Mission Control"'s blobby synth rock to "Beast of All Saints," a massive, empty-hearted ballad that shoots past the band's own "Godless" to rival Spiritualized's interstellar brooding. The band even does its best impression of the Rolling Stones' "Miss You" on "Welcome to the Third World," although Taylor's borderline-obnoxious vocals and attitude undermine some of the song's cool. Attitude also reigns on the stylishly tongue-in-cheek "Talk Radio" and more flamboyantly on "The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers aka the Ballad of Sheriff Shorty," a psychobilly-tinged rocker embellished with strings and gunfire. However, the camp factor is surprisingly low on most of ...Earth to the Dandy Warhols..., as is the number of songs about frenemies and drugs. The band focuses on love, rather than friendships, gone wrong on the deconstructed chamber pop of "And Then I Dreamt of Yes" and "Now You Love Me"'s minor-key brooding and bragging. Toward the album's end, however, the band's restraint unravels, with mixed results: "Mis Amigos," which is as much about hanging out with friends as it is about pot, is a gleeful, red-eyed fiesta; "Valerie Yum" starts out as stomping pop, then falls into an aptly slowed down, spoken word section before revving up again; and the final track, "Musee d' Nougat," a 15-minute trawl through French-accented vocals and formless synth drones, seems to be where the Dandy Warhols put most of their annoying ticks on this album. Before that song, though, ...Earth to the Dandy Warhols... finds the band breaking some new ground with "Love Song," a bit of futuristic Americana with intricate fingerpicked guitars and banjos buffeted by keyboards, and "Wasp in the Lotus," an electro-psych epic swathed in massive feedback squalls. The best moments of ...Earth to the Dandy Warhols... rival the Dandys' finest work, and despite some weak spots, it's a giant leap in the right direction. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'Odditorium or Warlords of Mars'
Release Date 1/1/2005
Tracks 12
Label Capitol
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Although Dig! covered the symbiotic, love-hate relationship between the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre more than thoroughly enough, more proof that the Dandies still want to be taken as seriously as the Massacre's misunderstood genius Anton Newcombe arrives with Odditorium or Warlords of Mars, an album that's half-inspired, half-embarrassing, and completely self-indulgent. As if the title weren't enough warning, Odditorium's opening track, "Colder Than the Coldest Winter Was Cold" -- in which A&E announcer/journalist Bill Kurtis explains how the Dandy Warhols invented rock & roll "after the great war" -- gets things off to a strange start. Unfortunately, in this case strange doesn't mean interesting or good. Odditorium is bookended by two of the most meandering, pointless tracks the band has ever recorded. "Love Is the New Feel Awful" is merely a song that could've been good if it weren't bloated with several minutes' worth of fruitless noodling. It's the closer, "A Loan Tonight," with its irritating, oddly strangled vocals, clunky keyboards, and listless guitars that go on and on for nearly 12 minutes, that is so infuriatingly bad you wish you could somehow un-hear it, and maybe the rest of the album while you're at it. Which is a shame, because the middle stretch of Odditorium has more than a few tracks that rank with the band's best work. "Down Like Disco" and "All the Money or Is It the Simple Honey" show off their skills as a smart, satirical pop group, while moody, hungover ballads like "Holding Me Up" and "Everyone Is Totally Insane" make emptiness seem profound. Meanwhile, "Easy," a slinky, hypnotic track that builds on a simple groove, and "There Is Only This Time," a spacious meditation with close harmonies and brass flourishes, balance the Dandies' pop and experimental leanings far better than anywhere else on the album. Taken as a whole, Odditorium is scattered and half-baked (in more ways than one), but its best moments are ripe for adding to play lists and mixtapes. Something this indulgent could only be a labor of love, but even die-hard Dandy Warhols fans might find embracing this album to be too much work. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'Welcome to the Monkey House'
Release Date 5/5/2003
Tracks 13
Label Capitol
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Over the course of their career, the Dandy Warhols alternated between slick, smart, slightly smirky pop singles like "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth" and "Bohemian Like You" and the ambitious yet somehow empty-sounding tracks that made up the rest of their albums. With their fifth album, Welcome to the Monkey House, the band capitalizes on their pop sensibilities and even manages to turn their prior weaknesses into strengths, resulting in a collection of gloriously blank, cleverly stupid neo-new wave songs. It's true that, once again, the Dandy Warhols look to other people's music for direction, but this time around, the new wave and synth-pop revivals that inform the album sound so natural that it's hard to imagine the band in any other incarnation. Welcome to the Monkey House's glossy mix of synths, guitars, and drum machines -- aided and abetted by co-producer Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran -- are the perfect complement to Courtney Taylor's knowing, flip outlook. The album gets off to a strong start with sharply crafted songs like "We Used to Be Friends" -- which feels a little bit like a follow-up to Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia's "Bohemian Like You" -- and "I Am Over It," a slice of electronic pop that's delivered in appropriately blasé, mechanical fashion. Not surprisingly, most of the album's best songs revolve around emptiness, drugs, and narcissism, such as "The Dope," an electro-inspired number that could give Fischerspooner a run for its money when it comes to jittery, vocodered trendiness. "I Am a Scientist" is the album's trashy zenith; a hybrid of sleazy beats, breathy samples and a rather nihilistic celebration of science's lack of emotion (not to mention its contributions to recreational chemistry). "You Were the Last High," however, confuses drugs and girls in an unusually bittersweet way. Some shades of paranoia and existential crisis creep into the album from time to time, more playfully on "Plan A" and more seriously on the brooding "Insincere Because I," giving a what-goes-up-must-come-down balance to party-hard odes such as "The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone" and "Hit Rock Bottom." Like any party, things start to fall flat toward the end of Welcome to the Monkey House; "Heavenly," "I Am Sound" -- an "Ashes to Ashes" homage -- and "You Come in Burned" provide a sluggish comedown to the rest of the album's go-go pace, although they're not as distinctive as what came before them. Ultimately, in general and on this album, the Dandy Warhols work best when they don't try to inject weighty matters like meaning and substance into their jaded pop confectionery. Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia might still be the band's most accomplished album, but by embracing their emptiness and stylishness on Welcome to the Monkey House, they've crafted an album that is no less enjoyable because of its disposability. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia'
Release Date 1/1/2000
Tracks 13
Label Capitol
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Though they still tend towards pastiche, the Dandy Warhols' third full-length, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, presents a bakers' dozen of their most focused and cohesive songs. Where their earlier albums were eclectic to the point of being scattershot, this release manages to limit the band's style-switching to dreamy, sweeping epics like "Godless" and "Nietzsche," sussed, sleazy power pop like "Horse Pills" and "Cool Scene," and country and gospel ventures like "Country Leaver" and "The Gospel." The group's increasingly strong songwriting makes most of these experiments successful and distinctive, though the Dandys fall into their old habit of appropriating sounds they like wholesale with "Shakin'," a "tribute" to Elastica's uptight yet sexy riffs and rhythms. Not surprisingly, the most successful songs on Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia are the least derivative ones, such as anxious pop songs like "Solid," "Get Off," and the delicate, lovelorn ballad "Sleep." On those tracks, as well as the satirical single "Bohemian Like You" -- this year's model of their hit "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth" -- the Dandys reveal themselves as a savvy pop band with a voice of their own. Though they're not all the way there yet, Tales From Urban Bohemia is a worthwhile step in their developing creativity. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'The Dandy Warhols Come Down'
Release Date 1/1/1997
Tracks 14
Label Intercord
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Power pop bands are often caught in a quandary. Their core audience praises them for their classicist approach, but if they ever want to break out into a larger audience, they have to modernize their sound, which makes their cult angry. The problem is especially difficult for bands that came of age in the early '90s, since they were weaned not just on the Beatles and Beach Boys, but also the Pixies and Sonic Youth. As a result, bands like the Dandy Warhols are restless, anxious to make catchy pop songs while keeping indie cred, as on their major-label debut, The Dandy Warhols Come Down. The band has talent not just for punchy hooks, but for layered sonics as well. As a result, the most immediate moments on the record are awash in a sea of feedback punctuated by pop hooks. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The Dandy Warhols seem like they should be a great band -- they bring together shoegazing, Brit-pop, lazy grunge, and Velvet Underground-style grittiness, all with a wicked sense of humor. Dandys Rule OK? is fairly well written. The band seems to be at its best when it parodies other bands: "Lou Weed," "Ride," and "The Coffee and Tea Wrecks" are all affectionate pastiches of their namesakes, and "The Dandy Warhols T.V. Theme Song" is a fine bit of bouncy pop. ~ Nitsuh Abebe, All Music Guide
