Smoke It Review (Long) From The Guardian
|
The Guardian
by Garry Mulholland
August 21, 2005
Fashion may have tossed the glam-poppers aside, but
this song reeks of rock's decadent best, says Garry
Mulholland.
The Dandy Warhols are a proper pop group. Pretty in a
dirty sort of way; doused with a seedy glamour;
blessed with a smart-dumb name and smart-dumb names
like Courtney Taylor-Taylor; unafraid to be
pretentious and affected because that's a pop star's
job; and chock-full of big, juicy riffs and big,
rockin' tunes that are all laced with a precious,
potent sneer. For those of us whose pop cherry got
popped by Bowie, Bolan, Roxy Music, Lou Reed and Iggy,
the Dandies are an oasis of art-glam in a desert of
sexless bloke rock, right down to the vital importance
- in a gospel according to Talking Heads and Sonic
Youth way - of having a cute-but-tough feminist icon
in the band, in the shape of bass/keyboards heroine
Zia McCabe. They are all slippery sex and drugs and
rock'n'roll, with pure pop heart replacing any
unnecessary junkie schtick, and, happily, they refuse
to go away, even when they are completely out of
fashion, which they pretty much have been throughout
their 10-year career.
'Smoke it' is the first single from their fifth album,
Odditorium or Warlords of Mars. The Odditorium is the
band's studio/art-space/meeting-place, in a converted
warehouse in their hometown of Portland, Oregon. The
Warlords Of Mars don't figure in 'Smoke it', which
seems less to do with excessive spliffage, and more
about setting fire to that bothersome life baggage,
and surrendering to the party principle contained
within Rolling Stones-style loucheness, a jangling and
nasty three-chord riff, and a bunch of smart-arse
lyrical non-sequiturs along the lines of: 'Alimony,
palimony/Don't get too drunk in Vegas/ At least not
with a waitress.' You wait your whole life for this
kind of advice.
It all sounds like a drink and drug-fuelled bacchanal
in which the various Warholians decided to sort of jam
in the midst of the orgy and somehow ended up with a
hit song, before being pulled back into the primordial
sex-sludge by transsexual mermaids on mescaline. If
this idea doesn't appeal to you, then there's a James
Blunt CD over there you can mope to, off you go, don't
wait up. The other smart thing about Courtney and co
lies in the existence of this Odditorium base, because
the mistake most bands make once they sell a record or
two is in leaving both the place and the scene that
inspired them, and then wondering why they run out of
inspiration. The Dandies re-create their own scene,
help out other bands and artists, entertain visiting
counter-cultural types, keep the network of like minds
that best sustains creativity and that reminds them
why they bothered in the first place.
'Smoke it' rocks so casually and righteously because
it sounds like it comes from somewhere both solid and
exciting. Lesser bands should put that in their pipes
and ... you get the idea.
· Smoke it' is available as a CD single and as a
download from iTunes from 29 August. 'Odditorium or
Warlords of Mars' (Parlophone) is released on 12
September.
|
|
|