- Music
- 20 Mar 01
The Dandy Warhols once teetered on the verge of a gigantic mainstream crossover with a song that boasted the opening lines "I never thought you'd be a junkie/Because heroin is so passe",
The Dandy Warhols once teetered on the verge of a gigantic mainstream crossover with a song that boasted the opening lines "I never thought you'd be a junkie/Because heroin is so passe", plus a video featuring dancing syringes.
Since then, its been quite quiet on The Dandy's pop psychedelic front, but Thirteen Tales From Urban Paranoia is exactly what it says on the tin: a diverse collection of Velvet Underground-flavoured pop and twisted neo-cowboy blues, tarnished with a semi-serious yearning to be the soundtrack for stoner moaners everywhere.
The opening seamless, swoonsome swoosh of 'Godless', 'Mohammed' and 'Nietscheze' is sheer genius: a moody, spaced out acoustic rock soundscape that evokes perfect pop memories such as The Boo Radley's 'Lazarus', and such bold and daring suites of music as Underworld's 'Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream of Love' triumvirate on Second Toughest In The Infants.
Unfortunately, it proves to be a sad case of The Warhols shooting their load far too soon. The humour and carry-on-rock'n'roller charm of their earlier work is sorely lacking, particularly on the rather lame comeback single 'Get Off' and the sickeningly sad lifestyle celebrations 'Cool Scene' and 'Bohemian Like You'.
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And if anything on this record is to produce a similar notoriety to 'Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth', it is probably the theremin-soaked 'Horse Pills'.
The Dandy Warhols can be great, but could be far greater - the drugs definitely didn't work.