Sydney, Australia - July 31, 2003

Sydney Morning Herald
at The Metro
by George Palathingal

If you tried and failed to get tickets to this show - and with all of them snapped up within five minutes of going on sale, there's a good chance you did - worry not. In fact, think yourself lucky. For only the most naive of dedicated Dandys devotees would rate a performance such as this as anything better than mediocre.
The Dandy Warhols should, of course, have been fantastic. With cheekbones that could cut glass and that preposterous, excellent name, singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor should have been a mesmerising frontman. The fact that this was the four-piece's only Sydney gig should have put a fire in their svelte bellies. And we know from Bohemian Like You that they can write terrific indie-pop songs (even if such tunes might have Keith Richards justifiably asking for his Brown Sugar riffs back).
But Taylor-Taylor - at whom we never got a proper look on this night because he was lit from behind for the entire set - chose instead to stand and drone into his mic, his strumming arm the only part of him noticeably moving.
At first it appeared as if he simply thought himself too cool to display anything resembling passion or even interest and that he would get going when he was ready, thank you very much. This never happened. Though at least his fellow guitarist, Peter Holmstrom, was more active. All the while, two alarming facts were becoming unmistakably apparent.
First, the Dandy Warhols are not particularly good musicians. Second, they actually have very few quality songs - most shapeless, self- indulgent, psychedelic jams. Such tracks seemed to have only two chords and it was often torturous watching Taylor-Taylor and Holmstrom try to get through them. Although the better, slightly more complex songs generally featured chords they'd ripped off from other classics - and were thus ones they had no doubt spent years practising in their bedrooms - they proved something of a struggle, too.
Keyboardist Zia McCabe and drummer Brent DeBoer weren't much better. McCabe, though fabulously sexy in an indie vixen kind of way, did little more than trigger synth lines and effects, while DeBoer's rudimentary rhythms made Ringo Starr look like Buddy Rich. Only the penultimate song provided a moment of genuine excitement in the form of the exhilarating android pop of recent single We Used to Be Friends. But it was a long time coming. There will be people boasting about how amazing this show was just because they got tickets. Do not believe them.