Pop Tarts: Slick, Modern Dandy Warhols Come On Down With A Just-right Sound (3 1/2 stars)
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The Oregonian
...The Dandy Warhols Come Down
by Curt Schulz
July 18, 1998
Despite Rolling Stone referring to them as the “Best British group to come from America,” the Dandy Warhols aren’t going for a particularly British sound. Playing slick modern pop, there just isn’t much of anything in the States to compare them to.
“The Dandy Warhols Come Down” essentially is an extension of the band’s first CD, “Dandy’s Rule O.K.,” but even more so. It’s bigger, more lush, more textured, more focused. The guitars crash like tsunami waves, the keyboards are pushed to the front, the beat is huge and Courtney Taylor has abandoned his falsetto vocals for a slightly nasal twang.
Setting a decadent tone with the overlong (seven minutes) atmospheric piece “Be In,” “Come Down” really begins with the anthemic “Boys Better,” which features a driving guitar attack and a synthesizer line borrowed from the Sweet’s “Fox On The Run.”
The CD alternates between moody dreamscapes and shameless pop arrangements. “Minnasoter” is the triumphant, day-tripping step past all the jangly guitar so prevalent on “Dandys Rule O.K.” Orange” and “I Love You” slow the pace down to a leisurely crawl of heartbeats and moaning.
“Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth” is the bands anti-drug song. It condemns IV narcotic use – not on moral, philosophical or health grounds, but because its now unhip to shot dope:
”I could say
Shouldn’t you have got a couple pierces
And decided maybe that you were gay?
In a way, I can’t help but feel responsible
I always knew that you were insane
With your pain
But I never thought you’d be a junkie
Because heroin is so passé.”
“The Dandy Warhols Come Down” is an undisciplined, unruly ogre of a pop record. America could easily go nuts for it.
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