CMJ's ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down review

CMJ New Music Report
...The Dandy Warhols Come Down
by James Lien
June 30, 1997 - Issue 528

The back cover of the Dandy Warhols' debut album has one of those photos that says it all: The band is sitting on a once-elegant-bus-now-dilapidated couch in the middle of a busy highway, casually sipping wine from long-stemmed glasses. The Dandy Warhols take the Brit aesthetic of wasted rock elegance and translate it so the wide-open spaces of America. Lead singer Courtney Taylor looks like a typical angst-moaning rock'n'roller, but we can just as easily visualize him throwing chairs and punches around in a hick cowboy bar in Texas. Of course, the same is true for their music on the one hand, the Warhols could be a cousin to Blur, Oasis or Verve, but on the other, they're firmly in she tradition of Northwest power-pop artists such as the Posies or Dwight Twilley. Come Down begins wish she cathartic ragarock of "Be-In," and alternately goes from rock to ethereal heights over the course of its 14 songs, but the album's mix is sprinkled throughout with subtle retro nods ("Junkie" has a drum sound lifted from ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down," for cryin' out loud). The Dandy Warhols are just hitting their stride as a band, and will only get louder, wilder and more messed up from here. Come Down so "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth," "Hard On For Jesus" and "Every Day Should Be A Holiday."