Dandy Warhols Visit Odditorium, Return To Film

MTV.com
by Rodrigo Perez
March 9, 2005


Band mastering new LP, appearing in Michael Winterbottom's '9 Songs.'

In "Dig!" last year's indierrific documentary on the egos of warring rock bands, Courtney Taylor sneered into the camera and boasted of his songwriting prowess, "I sneeze hits."

The feud between Taylor's Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre might be over (see " 'Dig!' Digs Deep Into A Bizarre Indie-Rock Rivalry"), but later this year, the Warhols frontman will have a chance to prove whether his handkerchiefs are worth keeping.

According to a post on the Dandy Warhols' Web site, the Portland band is putting the final mastering touches on its fifth record, Odditorium or Warlords of Mars.

The follow-up to 2002's new-wave-inspired Welcome to the Monkey House and named after their Andy Warhol Factory-inspired home studio, Odditorium will be out by summer if the band has its way. Fifteen tracks for the album were recorded, and a video was recently shot for "Smoke It," the song the group says will be its first single.

What will the record sound like, considering the band's penchant for left turns? Whatever isn't the moment's prevailing trend.

"We tend to do what no one else is doing but we think they should." Taylor said. "When we had Kid Rock and boy bands, we did a psychedelic rock record [13 Tales of Urban Bohemia]. [Our debut] Come Down came out after the death of shoegazer, because there was only grunge, and we thought, 'Somebody's gotta make a f---ing shoegazer record.' "

While Monkey House had the glossy production sheen of Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes, an alternate take was also recorded. "Our last [record] had two versions," the perennially laconic Taylor said. "We had [what you could call the] 'Outkast version' — [which sounded like] a garage band covering Dr. Dre songs mixed by Outkast — and then we did the 'Sade version' with Nick Rhodes, which is the one the label wanted to put out."

Taylor said the group's upcoming record takes a back-to-basics approach that treads on one particular band's sound. "It's just a rip-off of the Dandy Warhols. It's just a total rip-off of their sounds. It's really shameless," he said with a smirk.

A few other projects are also in store for the band this year, including finishing up a live DVD from footage shot at a three-hour show in Australia.

Already immortalized on film, the Dandies' next movie appearance will be "9 Songs," a new movie by director Michael Winterbottom, the man behind one of their favorite features, "24 Hour Party People" (see "Kurt Loder Weighs In On '24 Hour Party People' ").

It's a story about a guy who has a relationship with this chick, and they have a bunch of sex," Taylor said. "Then he's stuck with a whole bunch of dudes in Antarctica. He goes from having the London super-hot chick to this dirty awesome life.

" '24 Hour Party People' is one the best movies ever made." Taylor added. "We watched it in the studio about nine times the first two weeks we got it. When we heard that he wanted to film us, it was like, 'You can film whatever you want.' "

The cinematic projects don't end there, either. Taylor, who directed his own anti-Bush documentary in October 2000 — "It's the End of the World as We Know It" — hopes to shoot his newest screenplay, "One Model Nation," in the fall.

Inspired by the WTO riots of 2001 in Seattle, Taylor hopes to convey his contempt for those who thought the destruction was some sort of hip, almost-fashionable political statement.

"It's the film I needed somebody to make for me when I was 19. The [anarchists] just destroy things, but they have the same big puffed-up, retarded egos, like me or Anton [Newcome of the Brian Jonestown Massacre]. Artists have retarded egos. These people dress real cool and think they're really hip. Why am I disgusted by that? Because they're gross and they're hateful."