the dandy warhols - odditorium or warlords of mars
the warhols return with their fifth album with probably one of the worst album titles ever, and one of their strangest albums.i have always been a secret admirer of the bands previous releases, they way that they unsubtly dig into the past glories of rock and roll and add their addictive pop hooks always make me smile. having a reputation for being a musical magpie however can sometimes work against a band, and so this time around the band have dropped their previous experiments into synth pop and have returned to their roots of drawn out simplistic guitar chords, psychedelic layers and effects and courtney taylor-taylor lazy vocals, well not totally but we'll come onto that in a minute.
to start off the hour long trip, we get a radio introduction describing the bands recent adventures which we'll ignore and head straight for the first real track, 'love is the new awful', a 10 minute epic jam monster where the guitars are strummed and feedback'd, all manner of sonic extras are thrown in at the halfway mark including a improvised trumpet, random noises, and a hammond organ from hell. the atmosphere is doom laden, rather oppressive and will scare anyone left over from previous vodaphone adverts. however, this is a band comfortable with their place, and are now loosening up and enjoying their freedom, and generally sounding like they don't care whether anyone else is listening.
if you get through the opener with a smile then the rest of the album is a breeze. 'easy' could easily be mistaken for a gorillaz b-side, all funky loops and courtney playing with his vocal technique sounding just like damons attempts at the falsetto groove, it's a fine slice of clipped, funky guitars with the usual layers of delicate feedback, and is probably the best chunk of melody on the album, especially when the horns kick in at the 5 minute mark. the fact that the chord progression used throughout the tracks 7 minutes is then repeated for 'all the money of the simple life honey' does make you wonder just what the band are up to, but as the song is a direct to the heart acoustic strummed guitar groove (accompanied by more of that trumpet !) by the forth listen you care not. this is probably the closest track to a commercial crossover hit, possibly. 'the new country' is a jokey slap-my-thighs hoedown and provides a few minutes of fun before we slip back into the drawn out shoegazing class of 'holding me up' which would easily fit onto any of the bands back catalogue. and so, the album continues, it's all very nice and easy, a few catchy choruses, the well defined warhol sound, and suchlike. that is, until we get to the final track, 'a loan tonight', where they revisit their desire to experiment, and bring out their old school synths again. the track is a 12 minute homage to all things gary numan and tubeway army, the dirty analogue synth bass line, the imposing atmosphere, the effect laden nasal vocals make it hard to actually tell that this is the same band that provided the music over the last hour. it's such a cold hearted jolt to the system that the track actually leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. unless you happen to enjoy the recent electroclash revival. which i do, but the track just feels out of place in these surroundings, leaving the listener in a state of confusion as to what are the dandy warhols doing.
have they just made an album which consists of 'lets please the fans' formulaic throwaway tracks, and then drop their true identity onto the end? repeated listening reveals that there is a strange duality going on here, so we end up with a schizophrenic album where the dandy warhols try to incorporate their desire to be a truly out there experimental entity alongside the desire to hit the radio playlists.
i'm not so sure it works, so you make your own mind up.
watch some of the album : here