The Vibes Dandys Rule OK review

The Vibe
Dandys Rule O.K.
by Johnny Walker (Black)
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Possessors of the greatest b(r) and name in rock and roll (“We couldn’t believe nobody else had thought of it” lead guitarist Pete Holmstrom says), Portland, Oregon’s The Dandy Warhols live up to their name on this, their debut album (also known as Dandys Rule OK?). Their philosophy is rather neatly summed up by the cool photo on the back cover of the CD, which shows the band seated on a discarded couch in the middle of a deserted highway, sipping wine from those wonderfully cheesy wineglasses your mother probably has in her cupboard. These dandies, you see, aren’t Parisian or British, but American, and the true dandified existence in America can only be found in the the low-rent, slacker Pop-life which the Dandy Warhols take to like ducks to water.

From the nude picture of band members Courtney Taylor (guitar/lead vocals), whose torso is emblazoned with the slogan, “Kings Of Pop,” and Zia McCabe (bass/percussion), whose torso is just plain lovely, the keyword for these Dandies is FUN, immediately setting them apart from the tedious professional angst exhibited by bores such as Courtney Love, Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan (aka The Three Snoozes), to name a few of the Dandie’s guilty (and guilt-ridden) compatriots. From the opening moments here, where “The Dandy Warhols’ T.V. Theme Song” is given a very funny introduction by an effete-sounding gent named Thomas Pancake, the band seems intent on elevating themselves – and therefore their audiences - above the mundanity of everyday pain and boredom that the aforementioned culprits wallow in.

What’s really cool is the way the Dandies mine the best of recent British guitar rock and give it a nice, trashy Yank twist, surely an aesthetic move that their namesake, that Any fella, would have applauded. Songs like “Ride,” which, yup, sounds a helluva lot like the now defunct shoegazers Ride, with its wall of surging, feedback laden guitars and ethereal vocal harmonies, and “(Tony, This Song Is Called) Lou Weed,” a hilarious pisstake of every Lou Reed guitar riff and vocal you’ve ever heard rolled into one, are successful both as parodies and as originals, which is how these satirical things are supposed to work (think Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, eh?).

Anyway, the important thing here is that the band never let postmodern mimicry or satire derail them from the task at hand, which is making great, emotive rock music. Groovy tunage like “Best Friend,” which has a 60s psychedelia meets 90s shoegazing feel, and the busier “Not Your Bottle,” transcend their influences and take you on “out there” into a psychic landscape where “the skaters are high on mushrooms /passing out hits of LSD” (from “Not Your Bottle”). “The Coffee And Tea Wrecks” also vibes along marvelously on a semi-Eastern sounding tuning and a supercool “Tomorrow Never Knows”-ish guitar solo, while “Genius” non-ironically approximates the icily forlorn atmosphere of the third Velvet Underground album (cf. “Jesus”). “Don’t have to be fucking brilliant to see/I’m not as smart as I seem to be” sings Taylor over a wave of grinding guitars as the song surges toward climax.

The emotional peak of The Dandy Warhols occurs during tracks 11 & 12. “Just Try” conjures the confessional vibe of Plastic Ono Band-era John Lennon over a pair of strumming acoustic guitars to exhilarating effect, as Taylor’s overdubbed vocals swirled. The following track, “Nothing (Lifestyle of a Tortured Artist For Sale),” Can only be described as majestic, as guitars that hit with the power of prime-time My Bloody Valentine resonate above and beneath Taylor’s fuzzed-out vocal, which seemingly excoriates a fake-bohemian artiste-poseur who in reality “wants for nothing… that’s what you deserve.” After this peak, you might find the sixteen-plus minutes “Sister Ray” homage of “It’s A Fast-Driving Rave-Up With The Dandy Warhols,” a tad excessive. Personally, I love(d) it. But hey, like The Dandy Warhols, I find limitations, or at least the acknowledgement of them, a frightful bore.