Bad Dandy

citybeat.com
by Brian Baker
Nov. 16-Nov. 22, 2000

The Dandy Warhols are road tripping (and off-road tripping is just as possible). On this evening, the band are imprisoned in a van on their way to San Diego for yet another night on their current tour promoting their acclaimed new album, Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia (Capitol). Guitarist Peter Holmstrom is concentrating on the interview while dealing with the simultaneous distraction of the cell phone he's forced to use and the tumult swirling around the inside of the van, as food orders are being shouted up to the driver.

This scene is comparatively tame considering the debauchery that has been and will be reported along the way on this circuit. Bassist Zia McCabe's spanking of audience members and vocalist/guitarist Courtney Taylor's frequent nude appearances are just some of the stage antics that make a Dandy Warhols concert seem like a page from Fellini's fever dream journal.

The Dandys have been on the road since just after the release of Thirteen Tales, and, with five weeks or so left to go, fatigue is beginning to set in. Holmstrom admits the band has been, in his words, "going through the motions" on some of the dates, but is still having a great time nonetheless.

"We're ready for Christmas," he says wistfully as the chaos around him goes up a couple of decibels. If it's any consolation, Christmas has come early for the Dandys, with the inevitable appearance of Thirteen Tales on many critics' Top 10 lists for the year. The new album is similar to the sonic landscapes the band created on their first two releases, the indie delight Dandy Warhols Rule OK and the major label bow The Dandy Warhols Come Down. Both were escalating visions of guitar-washed, acid-drenched jet-trash psychedelia, and Thirteen Tales follows suit to a certain extent. But, as Holmstrom notes, the album's final outcome was determined by one very important factor.

"I think it might just be that we're more accomplished musicians," says Holmstrom. "We actually feel comfortable with the idea of being able to pick out what we're doing, so we didn't layer things quite as much."

The subtle differences between the new album and its predecessors have resulted in a smooth transition onstage as the Dandys present a few old tunes from their catalog alongside the new material from Thirteen Tales. As the band relearned some of the old songs, they naturally dovetailed with the new tracks for the eventual set lists on the new tour.

"The only real differences between this record and the last one were the way they were mixed," says Holmstrom. "We recorded this one with tons of guitar tracks, but we ended up using just a few of them. When we play them live, we have the same set of tools for every single song, so they tend to fit well together. It's all Dandy Warhols music."

While the mixing may be the only technical difference, there's no disputing the sharper focus from the last album to the new one. The lengthy and meandering Dandy Warhols Come Down was an amazing piece of work for a band on their sophomore album. Come Down seemed more of an atmospheric album laced with songs, while Thirteen Tales seems like a song album laced with atmosphere.

"We really approach each song as its own unique thing," Holmstrom says. "So whatever's at hand seems to get used, and whatever tricks anybody can come up with on the spur of the moment."

While Holmstrom concedes that Come Down was a weightier piece simply by virtue of its volume of material, he reveals that the band recorded as much, if not more, material for Thirteen Tales but wound up trimming a good deal of it out of the final sequence.

"It was really only because we couldn't quite fit all the songs we recorded into an order that we felt comfortable with," he says. "There's a bunch of songs that ended up as B-sides for European singles that were recorded at the same time as Thirteen Tales but just didn't quite fit in. In the past, we would have put them on anyway."

The other component to the Dandys' incredible sonic palette is their facility in re-creating whatever era they choose to showcase at any given moment. On Thirteen Tales there are references to sugary '60s Pop ("Sleep"), '70s New Wave by way of the Cars ("Solid," "Shakin'"), and '80s Cult-like crunch ("Horse Pills," "Nietzsche"). Taylor sings like Iggy and swings like Ray Davies on "Country Leaver," while the band gives the track an acoustic Country/Blues makeover. With the one-two punch of openers "Godless" and "Mohammed" and the album's first single "Bohemian Like You," the Dandys make a case for themselves in the "We're the American Blur" competition (as if they had any), and generally leave little doubt that the Velvet Underground slept here.

With all those influences in their trick bag, the question for the Dandys becomes one of intent. Just how transparent are the band's influences when applying them to their material, and how much of their '70s pastiche is a by-product of Taylor's songwriting evolution?

"Probably about half and half," Holmstrom answers. "We like to show our influences. Even on our first record, we named songs after the bands we were trying to do, like 'Ride' or 'Lou Reed,' so we've always done that. But it's more the approach to each song, and not necessarily the songwriting. It's wanting to take each song as far as it would go, in whatever direction, whether it be Country or Rock or Pop or New Wave or Punk or whatever."

That desire to stretch the material to its logical conclusion came to a head after the album was completed and the mixing process on Thirteen Tales had begun. Luckily, a two-month cooling off period before the final mix proved that the Dandys had been right instinctively and left everything as it had been.

"There was the period (after mixing) of trying to get it all put together, and you go through so much doubt and you question everything," says Holmstrom of the confusing time after the album was completed. "Plus, you've spent so much time working on it that you really lose perspective. For a while, we didn't know what the hell we were dealing with because it sounded different from the last record. We actually, at one point, thought about going back in and re-mixing it and putting the layers of guitars and keyboards back in. During our time off, it was all discussions of how we were going to change it, and what we were going to do with it. It all proved to be unnecessary, and we didn't do it. We came around. It's getting a lot of critical acclaim, and we couldn't be happier with the results."

As is usually the case with restless creative people, the Dandys are already looking ahead to their next album, or at least their next sonic blueprint. A recent recording session with Massive Attack for their next album was a good experience and laid the groundwork for a possible direction for the Dandys in the near future. For the time being, the members of the Dandy Warhols are content, tired though they may be of this latest road excursion. Taylor has been widely quoted in the press as having said that Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia is the "last Classic Rock album." Pete Holmstrom takes up the banner and clarifies the bold statement.

"The recording technique, the way people record albums these days, is very different," he explains. "A lot of people don't record to tape anymore, especially young bands where the record company isn't about to fork over the dough for 2-inch tape, when they can record to a fucking hard disk which doesn't cost anything. There won't be as much using old tube mics and tube compressors in the way that we tried to do it. This may be the last Classic Rock album that anyone makes. We'd love it if someone else would make one, though."