Feelin' Dandy?

Album: …Earth to the Dandy Warhols…

Artist: The Dandy Warhols

Genre: Psychedelic Garage Rock

Year: 2008

Label: Beat The World

I don’t know what the Dandy Warhols sound like. Well, maybe that’s not true… I guess ultimately they sound like themselves, but coming up with some fancy metaphor for their sound is currently escaping me. A Psychedelic Garage Rock band, The Dandy Warhols have been recording and touring since the 90’s and have amassed a large fan base. They’ve been all over, toured with big names like David Bowie and the Rolling Stones but before this album I’d never heard them. Oh, I’d heard OF them, and people have told me before how much I’d like them, but I’d never managed to actually hear them till tonight. Weird. I guess they just weren’t on my radar. I don’t know why this is, as I quite like this album …Earth to the Dandy Warhols. It manages to scratch that itch I sometimes get for spaced out Psychedelic music. Actually, considering that modern spaced out Psychedelic music can often be turgid and uninteresting, the Warhols get a plus for managing to hold my attention through some of their more jam heavy moments.

These usually aren’t nice, tight little songs; there’s room for weirdness and freak outs. A notable exception is the first single off the album, the two minute long “Mission Control”, which is sort of an odd choice, considering that it doesn’t accurately represent the rest of the album. It’s a short little Garage rocker, and they are a Garage rock band, but it doesn’t quite show off the Psychedelic feel that most of the album conveys. I notice bands doing this a lot. Of all the songs on the album, they choose the one that most mis-represents them and use it as their first single. Beck did this with Modern Guilt, but with him it’s excusable because, really, no Beck songs sound alike. But I’m getting off topic.

Courtney Taylor Taylor, the Warhols’ front man, has a deep, slurred voice which causes me to picture him staggering drunkenly around the recording studio. It’s a very appropriate voice for the music as it gives the already warped songs an even more twisted atmosphere. He also usually sings through some kind of filter, which gives his voice a distant sound, taking the weirdness levels from X-Files to Doctor Who in short order. What this album failed to do is wow me, which is OK; I don’t expect everything to be Return to Cookie Mountain or the second coming of Jeff Mangum. The Dandy Warhols are in the end exactly what their name purports them to be - just Dandy and if you like them, Psychedelic music or Indie Rock in general you’ll probably like this album too.