Outer Sounds ...The Dandy warhols Come Down review

Outersound.com
...The Dandy Warhols Come Down
by Manolis Priniotakis
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In the summer of 1995, the cover of The Paperback Jukebox, a now-defunct free Oregon music publication, featured a nude Courtney Taylor, frontman for the Dandy Warhols, facing the camera with "King of Pop" smeared across his chest. Portland's music intelligentsia was up in arms at that time over the emergence of Everclear, and the locals didn't want any more carpetbaggers, as the Dandy Warhols were seen, representing the "Portland Scene."
"Fine," Taylor seemed to being saying in response, "I'm cool, and -- POW! -- look at my penis!" And it was an alright penis, if I remember correctly, in the same way the band's new album, ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down, is alright: somewhat substantative and rather longish but in a kind of thin and not particularly memorable sort of way.

Featuring tracks with titles such as "Whipping Tree" and "Hard On for Jesus," Taylor still seems to be thinking with his dick. The band retained much of its Sturm und, um, Drone from 1995's Dandy's Rule, Okay! but with a touch more Jesus and Mary Chainishness tossed in here and there. Apparently Capitol scrapped an entire album's worth of material the band had put together because it was just too dark and tuneless. If ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down is an attempt at a happy album, the previous try must have made Trollope read like Dave Barry.

So what do we have here? A backhanded anti-heroin song in "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth" (which is fine if it will drive that incipient K's Choice song off the air) and a couple Blury odes to something or other in "Boys Better" and "Green." Thrown in for good measure is "Cool as Kim Deal," which isn't quite as clever as "Lou Weed" off Dandy's Rule, Okay, but still provides the ironic iconoclasm every good major label indie release requires.

It's all good fun, but if the Dandy Warhols planned to be the saviors of rock 'n' roll as people who say things like "Yeah, I've got some blow in my pocket" (which I once heard Taylor mutter) seem to desire, their efforts require a tumescence in the near future. Until then, this album will suffice as a relatively harmless plaything.