Sunday Herald's Welcome To The Monkey House review

Sunday Herald
Welcome To The Monkey House
by Graeme Virtue
May 11, 2003

From the name down, The Dandy Warhols were always a better concept than a band. Pouting, affected drug omnivores, they constantly gave the impression they thought they were slumming it with their modest success. But when one of their songs was employed by a mobile phone company to flog handsets -- the Rolling Stones soundalike Bohemian Like You -- they suddenly had more money than God and none of the common sense.

So this post-windfall album is an all-expenses-paid attempt to become the new Duran Duran. But at least they've gone back to the source; Simon Le Bon provides backing vocals on The Dope (the most successful emulation on the LP) while fellow Duraner Nick Rhodes co-produces the entire thing.

There are some fine moments here -- I Am Sound eerily recalls Bowie's Ashes To Ashes, there's a pleasing digital groove to You Were The Last High (mystifyingly co-written with Evan Dando, presumably when he was still wandering in the wilderness and didn't know his own mind) -- but despite the Mr Sheen slickness of the production, it doesn't really hang together as a record. And who does singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor think he's impressing by namechecking Elastica on the opening title track? Sometimes over-indulgence can be fun, but Welcome To The Monkey House is simply too much.