Consumables ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down review
Consumables
...The Dandy Warhols Come Down
by Tracey Bleile
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The leap the Dandies have made from their self-titled debut seems small, in that the overall sound is the same, but the development in musicianship is huge. They've graduated from long droning keyboard noodling to long droning keyboard noodling that is thickly layered with repetitive guitar jangles and a heavy rhythm section. Most of the songs start deceptively lo-fi, just the solo strums, or the simplest drum beat for a measure or two, and then the rest piles on until it's lost like a fine thread in the weave. Strap in kids, because the full-frontal sonic assault begins now.
It's the kind of music that gets the most mileage at a big party - a bass line to shiver the floor, synth pop with a whitenoisewash of guitar buzz - "Every Day Should Be a Holiday" cuts somewhere between the Pet Shop Boys and ZZTop (!?). And then there's those long weird keyboard solos that somehow your mind half turns off while the lower half of your body is undulating against its will. What you get in the end is a great scary subversive feeling like you get listening to the Pixies, where a song can be so happy and bouncy on the surface, yet so grainy and evil in composition - David Lynch, eat your heart out. It's just as well that if we start to lose the great British shoegazer bands, we gained one American trailblazer of our own.
What sets them apart, is when it isn't all giddy, it really is dirty shoegazing, like they skipped the deep introspection and went directly to the drugs, and they want you right down there rolling around on the ground with them. Songs like "Orange", "Green" (hmmm, look at all the pretty colors) and "Good Morning" sound like the soundtrack (this is my imagination, not personal testament) to a long slow nod-off. But then to enter a vein (sorry) of irony, Taylor confesses his sorrow to a counterpart for their choice of addiction (but not necessarily the behavior) in "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" - 'I never thought you'd be a junkie / because heroin is so passe'. This is the track slated for first ups as a single, and boy, I can just hear the chorus being howled out the window on that one. And if you thought "Dandy Warhols' TV Theme Song" from the debut dripped with insidous good humor - the almost-too-cute Jan & Deanesque harmonies and handclaps are an even better fit for this album in "Cool As Kim Deal" .
The pacing of the disc is right on target, although the last two offerings drag out the white noise aspect out just a tad too far - I feel like I'm sitting too close to a fan blowing in perfect pitch with one of those environmental sounds players. Minor gripe aside, this release is thoroughly hypnotic and draws you farther in with every listen. This is one for the good headphones, but be warned, every time you unearth another chunk of pattern in the weave, you'll be ever more snared in the Dandies' web. It's like the fruit-flavored wallpaper of Willy Wonka - it may just seem like background sound until you get close enough to truly appreciate it (I think the Dandies know what a snozzberry tastes like). This is where the winners in the sonic battle currently being waged will be putting their efforts - pay attention...