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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Courtney Taylor, singer and guitarist from Portland, was a textbook drug addict and a devout fan of 1960s music. He was also a rare melodic talent and, together with fellow guitarist Peter Holmstrom, managed to craft harmonies that fused his vice, his passion, and his gift in a way that was both experimental and catchy.
After the single Little Drummer (Tim/Kerr, 1994), containing
Dick and Genius, the debut album
Dandys Rule OK (Tim/Kerr, 1995 - Capitol, 1996) was launched worldwide
with much hype.
The album is, first and foremost, an impressive post-modernist survey of the
Sixties, from the garage-psychedelic refrain of
Dandy Warhols' T.V. Theme Song
to the colossal anthemic riff of Ride
to the dreamy velvety Nothing.
Songs such as Coffee And Tea Wrecks (a soaring
Byrds-ian motif
with Rolling Stones-ian progression
over a dirty drone a` la John Cale),
Lou Weed (a pun on Lou Reed),
Grunge Betty (the harder piece, leaning more towards T.Rex than Helmet)
de facto invented a new way of paying tribute to one's idols.
The nostalgic, driving sixteen-minute sideral-guitar ode of Fast-Driving Rave Up
stands as the aesthetic manifesto of the operation.
As a short summary of rock music, from the
the Stooges (Finale) to the
Grateful Dead (the eight-minute dilated space jam of Dick),
from Syd Barrett (Not Your Bottle)
to Jesus And Mary Chain,
the Dandy Warhols' fake hit parade is impeccable and rarely trivial.
The poppy Nothin' To Do to the languid Genius (their tributes
to Brit-pop) could have been left out.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Come Down (Capitol, 1997) is less experimental and more down-to-earth. Taylors tones remain eerily hallucinatory, coloring all the harmonies with their distorting perspective. Keyboardist Zia McCabe gains greater prominence in the arrangements.
The transcendent quality of their music is highlighted by the mantra of I Love You, repeated mechanically over a wall of tremolo, and by Be-In, which achieves a historically significant effect by layering Merseybeat-style vocal harmonies over the Velvet Undergrounds transcendent boogie and a synthesizer that mimics a Scottish bagpipe. From there spring their boldest experiments with song form: the hypnotic, funereal slo-core of Orange and the nightmarish Hard On For Jesus, a driving wind of guitar riffs and vocal harmonies.
The groups continued, almost paranoid tribute to the 1960s from the previous album is here considerably softened. Cool As Kim Deal blends assorted stereotypes of garage rock, Merseybeat, and surf; Boys Better pairs ethereal melody with a measured rhythm, epic organ phrasing, and heavily charged guitars. Taylor seems to enjoy playing the singer-songwriter, but always as a drug-fueled one, as in the solemn folk ballad Good Morning or the country-tinged Minnesoter, with melodic guitar counterpoints in the most whimsical timbres. Everyday Should Be A Holiday, by contrast, shamelessly copies the electronic boogie of Legs (ZZ Top). The band becomes predictable and terribly dull when paying homage to fame, as in the single Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth.
The album is capped by two instrumental closers: Pete International Airport, in the psycho-ambient style of the era, and The Creep Out, in the whimsical-psychedelic style of the previous albums Rave Up.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (Capitol, 2000) is almost a decadent
soap opera, a parody of the Rolling Stones and early Lou Reed set to generic
melodic music. Godless (a My Sweet Lord riff with mariachi trumpet) is a manifesto of moral
intents rather than musical ones. The album gently flows from
the raga-tinged Mohammed to the country-rock ballad The Gospel.
A sudden burst of energy with the wild distortions of Nietzsche is
quickly buried in more lethargic lullabies.
Get Off and Bohemian Like You, the singles, are even more
trivial than the average of their
trivial pop hits, devoid of any relevant riff or hook.
Dandy Warhols is the antidote to Marilyn Manson.
Welcome to the Monkey House (Capitol, 2003)
is an odd exercise in nostalgia, trading the guitars for synthesizers and
indulging in goofy imitations of Duran Duran, disco-music, glam-rock, Cars, etc.
We Used To Be Friends and Plan A are amusing for a few seconds
(as is a cover of Guided By Voices' I Am A Scientist) but this kind of
jokes can't last an entire album.
The album was later re-arranged and re-issued as
Are Sound (2009).
The Black Album (2005) is the unreleased first album.
Abandoning their formulaic power-pop style, the Dandy Warhols turned
Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars (Capitol, 2005) into a merry-go-round
of all the things that they had never done but always wanted to do, from
lengthy, droning space-rock
(Love Is the New Feel Awful, Easy, A Loan Tonight)
to roots-rock (The New Country All the Money or the Simple Life Honey).
If nothing else, this made their music interesting. But too many bands around
the world can do (and usually do) the same things much better.
Their later albums never recaptured the magic:
This Machine (2012),
Distortland (2016),
Why You So Crazy (2019),
Rockmaker (2024).
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