MTV's Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia review

MTV
Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
by -
-


For their third album, everyone's favorite Portland quartet asks you to break out the bong as they continue down the same woozy musical paths trod by Primal Scream and The Velvet Underground. Fronted by the always-insouciant Courtney Taylor, the Dandy Warhols mine a fertile vein of dream pop that includes forays into atmospheric country twang ("The Gospel"), Jesus & Mary Chain-like shoe-gazing ("Horse Pills") and psychedelia with both Middle Eastern ("Mohammed") and Burt Bacharach-like ("Godless") touches.

Proving that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this very American band manage to sound like Squeeze ("Get Off"), Elastica ("Shakin'"), and Jonathan Richman fronting Blur following a few too many pulls on a hookah ("Solid"). The one time where the band manage to emulate themselves is on the driving "Bohemian Like You," a number that serves as a follow-up to 1997's "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth." Throughout THIRTEEN, any sleepy sounding fuzz guitar or laid-back presentations are superseded by the unmistakable pop chops of the Dandy Warhols.