NME's Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth review

NME
Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth
by -
April 18, 1998

Single of the Week:

That Irvine Welsh is such a tosser! I mean, he writes this book about the exciting lives led by a bunch of smackheads despite the fact that the only smackheads that anybody has ever met in real life have just sort of sat there, dribbled and then shat themselves. Three cheers, then, for The Dandy Warhols! This is a superbly limp-wristed and gently bopping parody of that early Mary Chain-style smacked-out, bleached-to-buggery psycho-surfdrone through which swims a wriggly word-snake which hisses venom-dripping contempt at, for and on the world’s shittiest drug – “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passé”.
What a statement! The sheer nerve of these skinny young upstarts with their floppy fringes, rouged lips, tight T-shirts and ironic NHS-style geek-spex! The Dandy Warhols, on their first day in school, have marched straight into the playground and roared, “OI! RICHARDS, BURROUGHS, REED, BRUCE, GILLESPIE, COLERIDGE AND COBAIN! NOOOOOOOOOO!” Except in a much cooler and quieter way that doesn’t rely on quotes from four-year-old comedy sketches because that’s something that only an uncool wanker would do. Sorry.