Toronto, Ontario, Canada - September 7, 2003

The Globe And Mail
at The Opera House
By Alan Niester

It took a certain degree of chutzpah for Portland, Ore.'s Dandy Warhols to utilize the graphic design that they did for their new Welcome to the Monkey House release. Combining the banana from the Velvet Underground and Nico's 1967 debut with the zipper from The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers suggests that this is a band that very much wears its influences on its sleeve (no pun intended).

And lest anyone out there dare suggest that this statement is just another example of the critic trying too hard to manufacture a context, please be advised that this is a band that has in the past entitled songs Lou Weed (sic) and Ride, the latter in earnest remembrance of another of the band's primo stated influences, the eighties Brit shoegazer (neo-psychedelic) drone boys Ride. So there.

But then, it can't be easy to be in a young rock band these days. Trying to blaze new trails musically is about as easy as finding unexplored parts of the Toronto Islands. It's not going to happen. But at least there is enjoyment to be had out of the revisiting.

And that's precisely the way The Dandy Warhols' visit to Toronto's Opera House played itself out last Sunday night. It was an hour and a half or so of spot-the-influence, with the band taking the role of Alex Trebek and the audience playing the bemused contestants.

Certainly, there is lots to like on the new Monkey House disc. With the help of a cleaned-up production sound courtesy of Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes, The Dandy Warhols come perilously close to glam rock (or at least power pop) on songs such as We Used to Be Friends and Plan A.

But the Warhols' live performance stripped away a lot of the glossy sheen, with the band choosing to return to a more elemental shoegazer drone for large parts of the performance. It's first three numbers were dirges all, with ringing Velvet Underground guitars from lead singer/guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor layered over a thudding sturm und drang bottom.

Even when they moved into a pop mode, on songs such as the aforementioned Friends or the Euro cult hit Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth, the effect was still more turgid than bubbling, sort of middle-period Kinks lyric and melody, but grafted onto a New Order-styled backdrop.

At times, it almost seemed as if The Dandy Warhols had reached a fork in the road, and didn't know which way to turn. To the left, slick pop tunes mean the possibility of mass acceptance and riches. To the right, the same old druggie-fuelled shoegazer drone (exemplified on this night by numbers such as Horse Pills) suggest a continuing cult status that perhaps the band finds comforting.

Nothing that was done at Sunday night's performance seemed to suggest that the band was quite yet ready to embrace the possible wider audience that Welcome to the Monkey House implied that they deserve.