Headcleaners's Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth review (9 out of 10)

Headcleaner
Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth
by -
April 20, 1998

More wide-eyed and fazed-out glam from Courtney's maverick band of US beautiful people with a song you should be familiar with given it's on the radio every 5 minutes. With its "heroin is so passe" refrain, this worms its way into your head and demands you whistle it til your lips crack. The Dandys psychedelic wall of noise erects itself before you as Courtney's bed-ridden vocals drawl away like some wasted version of James Dean - cooler than ice cream Snickers and ten times as sexy. Not an anti-drug song, but an anti-addiction number; to paraphrase Geri Spice it is almost as addictive as the narcotic it mentions. They're cooler than you and boy do they know it.

A horribly reedy live version of the a-side is next, which does not hold a syringe to the full-on rush of the studio version. Then we get (deep breath) "It's A Fast Drivin' Rave Up With The Dandy Warhols Sixteen Minutes" (which is of course 7 minutes long), another live track that sees the Dandys hijacking The Stooges and The Velvet Underground then taking them for a breakneck joyride cross country, smashing through territory previously travelled by MBV, Spacemen 3 and any other band that's ever played too long with a kaleidoscope and those funny-smelling fags.

Whilst everyone else around them is full of pre-millenial tension and paranoia, The Dandy Warhols are busy planning their 1999 New Years Eve shagfest with two lorry-loads of drugs and sixteen beautiful South American prostitutes. You can kinda see their point.