Dandy Warhols - A Bohemian Life in Chiaroscuro

Between the summer and autumn of 2000, in an era when a rock hit still had some chance of breaking through to what we'd now call the "mainstream" audience, all it took was turning on the TV to be hit with the notes of a song playing practically around the clock, accompanied by a video with the lyrics scrolling across the screen and a procession of makeshift singers taking turns at the microphone. That's how "Bohemian Like You" became a generational anthem for anyone on this side of the Atlantic aged between 14 and 20. The Dandy Warhols' hit turned into a cult phenomenon almost exclusively in Europe, while in the States it stayed fairly far from the chart positions that matter, even as it benefited from numerous film and commercial appearances. And yet, even today, the Oregon band - more active than ever - is still regarded as little more than a "one hit wonder". But is that really the case?

The beginnings

Born in Portland in 1967, Courtney Taylor-Taylor (the "doubling" of the surname would come as an affectation around the release of the third album) describes his youth as that of a teenager ill at ease in a world full of "big, clumsy guys and cheerleaders". After finishing high school, he decided to enroll at the local Cascade College to study psychology and sociology, while also taking refuge in literature and philosophy, with a particular fondness for Kurt Vonnegut and Friedrich Nietzsche respectively. It was at college that he met Peter Holmström, who was destined to become the other pillar of the future band. After graduating, Taylor-Taylor started working as a mechanic while also trying his hand at drums in a few local bands. Then, between 1993 and 1994, he decided to embark on a brand new, more personal project, and reached out to Holmstrom. Both played guitar, with Courtney also taking up position behind the microphone. The rhythm section was still missing entirely: Eric Hedford was brought in on drums, while Taylor-Taylor's attempt to put his then-girlfriend on bass quickly fell apart. She was replaced by Zia McCabe, a musician equally at home on bass or keyboards. Given that the debut album came out the following year, it's fair to say the lineup came together remarkably quickly.

The identity Courtney Taylor-Taylor intended to give the Dandy Warhols becomes clear right away. Steeped in Velvet Underground (whose mentor is the man who "lent" the project his name, albeit mangled) and Ride - two influences he would never stop denying - the frontman also wanted to add a more festive side, one naturally inclined toward excess: from their earliest gigs in Portland clubs, the quartet's live shows were marked, among other things, by acts of nudity that often involved the female members of the band too. It's how they caught the attention of the people running Tim/Kerr Records, a small (but significant, for the American alt-rock scene) Portland label that offered the Dandy Warhols a deal to record their first album.

Dandys Rule Ok, produced by Tony Lash and also known as the four-piece's "White Album" because of its cover, is the manifesto of a band that is in some ways still raw but already pointed, musically speaking, toward the sounds that would make their fortune in the years to come: indie-rock that often veers into garage and shoegaze, with a pop streak that softens and shapes the sound, setting it apart somewhat from what dominated America in the mid-Nineties. "The Dandy Warhols' T.V. Theme Song" shows off the band's playful, extroverted side, while the tribute "Ride" and the following "Best Friend" bring out their rougher edge, not without a few timid forays into psych territory. The true summation of this immature debut, however, is "Not Your Bottle", an electrified ballad that serves as something of a forerunner to the best chapters of their mature years (an early prototype of "Godless", in other words).

The Lou Reed impression on "(Tony, This Song Is Called) Lou Weed" is part of a script stuffed with citations and nods flaunted at every turn, which crop up like mushrooms throughout a tracklist that otherwise finds another notable highlight in the fragrant arpeggios of "Genius". The eight minutes of "Dick" confirm, besides a certain interest in shoegaze, a definite tendency toward grandiosity. The album, for that matter, closes with the triptych "It's a Fast Driving Rave-Up With The Dandy Warhols", made up of a brief prelude, a "sonic" development stretching past a quarter of an hour, and a finale.

The false start on Capitol and the first breakthrough

Confidence is not lacking, but then again, neither is talent. The first to notice are the people at Capitol, who promptly sign Taylor-Taylor and co. ahead of their second album. Things don't go as planned. Eager to get the record out, the Dandy Warhols present the label with a batch of songs that Capitol rejects outright, deeming them commercially unappealing. The album would later be released, previously unheard, as "Black Album" in 2004.

In any case, though still a little stung by the harsh rejection, the four return to writing under the guidance of their trusted Tony Lash, and by July 1997 they're ready to release what will be their second studio album: …The Dandy Warhols Come Down. Fourteen songs spread across a little over an hour, starting with the exact seven minutes of "Be-In", the lysergic mantra that definitively opens the doors to the American band's imaginative world. If "Boys Better" is (at least nowadays, two decades on) the forgotten gem, that's because the album also contains two other singles destined to win over audiences - especially in Europe - and in some ways earn a place in the anthologies of American indie-rock. "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" is the ultimate party song, mocking and laid-back just enough, with a chorus so sticky it demands to be hummed (or screamed at the top of one's lungs) over and over, with the keyboards, for once, taking precedence over the guitars. The fact that the music video was entrusted to none other than David LaChapelle only speeds up its inevitable canonization. Right behind it comes "Every Day Should Be A Holiday", a hit with an even weirder edge, framed in turn by an almost epic chorus built with calibrated melodic skill. The freshness of the Dandy Warhols' sound proved to be the key that unlocked a European audience - British listeners especially - hungry for new thrills in the midst of a full-blown britpop binge. It's no coincidence that both songs charted in the UK.

…The Dandy Warhols Come Down firmly establishes the more carefree side of the Portland outfit. A track like "Minnesoter", with its folk framework and electric guitars, is marked by Taylor-Taylor's almost slurred vocal delivery, as if to underline a desire for detachment that ends up, curiously, making him sound like a new Michael Stipe. The love song "I Love You" is pushed, almost laboriously, over dark synth textures, its chorus conjured up like a witches' sabbath. "Good Morning", on the other hand, follows a sunnier arc, another ballad buried beneath a wall of distorted guitars. The rarefied atmospheres of "Green" hang suspended in the air, awaiting an explosion that never comes, setting the stage for the revved-up power-pop of "Cool As Kim Deal", the collection's last exclamation point before it closes with the cosmic nine minutes of "The Creep Out".

Carried by its singles, …The Dandy Warhols Come Down marks the first international breakthrough for the four musicians from Oregon. More than in the States, in fact, their indie-rock hybrid found favour in Europe, ahead of their definitive consecration at the turn of the millennium.

Global success

In 1998, with the second album proudly displayed in record stores and their popularity on a steady rise, the Dandy Warhols found themselves without a drummer. Eric Hedford walked out over royalty disputes, and Taylor-Taylor decided to once again try bringing a relative into the band: this time it was cousin Brent DeBoer's turn, who proved up to the task and would remain in the lineup to this day. The tweak to the line-up served as prelude to work on the third album, the one that, in the intentions of both band and label, was meant to deliver their definitive consecration. For once in the history of rock music, reality lived up to expectations. There can be no doubt that Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia is the Dandy Warhols' commercial peak, but at the same time it's also their artistic manifesto.

Recorded in Portland between December 1998 and March 1999, and finally released on 1 August 2000, the band's third record made waves - once again - especially in Europe, going gold in the UK and charting in several countries, but it also did well in America, buoyed by heavy rotation on college radio. The first single, "Get Off", came out in May 2000 and had the luxury of featuring none other than friend Anton Newcombe as a guest guitarist. It's another party track, a power-pop gem that would go on to become one of the Warhols' most celebrated songs.

But it's the second single, released in August to coincide with the album's release, that lodged itself directly in the imagination of an entire generation. "Bohemian Like You", introduced by drums and synths, erupts into one of the most iconic guitar riffs of the dawning millennium. An irresistible "drive", lyrics that are an ode to carefree youth, and the inevitable chorus launched at a gallop and framed by the backing vocals of a Taylor-Taylor in a state of grace make it the most compelling song of its era - unsurprisingly chosen over the years by countless brands to soundtrack their TV ad campaigns.

The true gem of the collection, and perhaps the most beautiful song the Dandy Warhols ever wrote, is the one that opens the album: "Godless" is an orchestral ballad that unfurls its dazzling beauty over soft lighting and finely calibrated melodies, a treasure chest holding folk, indie-rock and chamber-pop within the American quartet's five most inspired minutes ever. The same narrative thread echoes through "Mohammed", even more evocative in its orchestral weavings and Taylor-Taylor's almost dreamlike lyrics. The opening triptych is rounded out by "Nietzsche", rougher in sound but wrapped in a more pronounced sense of epic grandeur. A jarring contrast comes with the plain, straightforward folk of "Country Leaver", followed by the indie-rock, in fine form, of "Solid" and "Horse Pills", which seem to reconcile R.E.M. and Beck. "Sleep" brings everything back to a private dimension through a kind of electrified lullaby carried by an almost dub-like beat. Also worth noting are the swaggering rock'n'roll of "Shakin'" and the heartfelt folk-rock of "Big Indian".

A swift decline

The success of Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia was propelled above all by the hit "Bohemian Like You", which turned up just about everywhere: on music channels, obviously, but also in commercials, TV trailers (the one for Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and even in scenes from feature films. In 2000, while playing Glastonbury, the Warhols were noticed by none other than David Bowie himself: the Thin White Duke's endorsement was the exclamation point on the "coolest band on the planet" status the Americans had managed to carve out for themselves, but it also had more practical consequences: Bowie wanted them as his opening act, particularly on the 2003 A Reality Tour.

It's that very year, 2003, that sees Taylor-Taylor and his bandmates get back in the game on record with the album Welcome To The Monkey House. Expectations surrounding the Portland four had changed considerably, as had the people orbiting the band. It's no great surprise, then, that the record was produced by Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran. A decision that led to two defining choices: the first, almost a natural move, was to wink at that European audience which, in recent years, had given the Dandy Warhols more satisfaction than they had found, at least chart-wise, back in the States. The other choice, probably more reckless, was the one that pushed the four to steer their sound toward synthetic horizons ill-suited to the band's background and spirit.

As had happened before, there seem to be discrepancies between the band and the label: the album's first mix is entrusted to Russell Elevado, but Capitol isn't satisfied and hands the job over to Rhodes. The original mix would later surface in 2009 as The Dandy Warhols Are Sound. Either way, Welcome To The Monkey House is the thud that brings the Warhols back down to earth after years of stargazing dreams. Behind the banana that pays yet another tribute to the Velvet Underground, there's precious little substance. Mostly because it's all too obvious that the Dandys' pop-rock sits awkwardly alongside the synth-pop it's forced to walk arm in arm with. The joyful straightforwardness at the heart of their sound barely manages to peek through on the new hit "We Used To Be Friends," glossy enough to make another run up the charts, and on "The Last High," the only track that shows any real trace of their time spent with Bowie.

The rest of the record is frankly subpar: "Plan A" calls in none other than Simon Le Bon on vocals, but the duet with Taylor-Taylor gets lost in the vacuity of a track that's anonymous to say the least. Things don't improve with the anxious "Wonderful You," which almost seems to anticipate the Kasabian yet to come, or with "I Am Over It," which dusts off Blur-style Britpop for no apparent reason or enthusiasm, or with "Scientist," whose ambitions seem to lean, perhaps, toward the dancefloor.

Against its own will, Welcome To The Monkey House is the door slammed shut on the Dandy Warhols' brief happy life, an Eldorado the Americans would never come close to again.

By 2004, Ondi Timoner's documentary "Dig!" already seems to capture the Warhols falling back into line with American indie-rock, chronicling the complicated relationship with Anton Newcombe's The Brian Jonestown Massacre. They're something like two sides of the same coin: glossy and brazen on one side, rough-edged and uncompromising on the other. The time has come to find themselves again and clear out the archives.

Also in 2004, Taylor-Taylor and co. decide to release — through their newly founded personal label, Beat The World — the famous Black Album that Capitol had sent back almost ten years earlier. It's actually a double album, since the second part, titled Come On Feel The Dandy Warhols, is the usual collection of B-sides, covers (including Blondie's "Call Me," Ac/Dc's "Hells Bells" and David Bowie's "The Jean Genie") and assorted unreleased material.

The Black Album has at least an anthropological value, since it captures the Dandy Warhols on their way up. It's worth noting that the rough rock of "Crack Cocaine Ranger" holds up well, and the sonic country of "White Gold" has a particular folksy appeal, but the demo version of "Good Morning" (later included on The Dandy Warhols Come Down) already sounds a cut above the rest of the material shelved at the time.

Back to the Past

While dusting off their origins on record, the Dandys decide to do the same in the studio. After the flop of Welcome To The Monkey House, the four of them hole up in their Portland rehearsal space, called Odditorium, to shape their next chapter. A chapter necessarily turned toward the past, in order to quickly sweep away the shadows of the present.

Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars comes out in September 2005 on Capitol. The hope is to make up lost ground, but this new collection of fresh material certainly won't be what turns the quartet's fortunes around. Despite a return to an even more psychedelic indie-rock, inspiration is in short supply. The first single, "Smoke It," tries to recapture the euphoric spirit of days gone by, without coming remotely close. Much the same can be said of the second single, "All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey," which plays its cards between folk leanings and the horns stuffed into the mix, but never quite takes flight.

Things improve with the return to the dreamy atmospheres of "Love Is The New Awful," unthinkable as a radio single (it runs close to ten minutes) but still more inspired than the following "Easy," itself seven and a half minutes long, yet even more soporific from every angle — not to say downright harmless.

The tracklist includes two more bloated tracks sandwiched between quicker numbers: "Holding Me Up" is another watered-down take on the best of the Warhols, a midtempo that drifts along mildly without making much of an impression; "A Loan Tonight" finally unleashes twelve minutes of weird-rock that are anything but memorable. Much like the album as a whole, really.

That the Dandy Warhols are no longer capable of writing great albums is confirmed, three years later, by …Earth To Dandy Warhols. The partnership with Capitol is by now effectively over, even though in 2010 the label would release the compilation The Best Of The Capitol Years: 1995-2007, a round-up of the best of the Portland outfit's four albums for the major. The album thus comes out on the Beat the World in-house label, but it doesn't lift the Warhols' fortunes one bit, as they remain stuck in a seemingly endless creative void. The band's style is by now well established, with alt-rock moving freely between pop chapters and shoegaze territory ("Wasp In The Lotus"), all stuffed with the by-now inevitable spacey settings — starting with the title and cover art, as if forming an implicit concept. The soporific "And Then I Dreamt Of Yes" echoes their early work, and is undoubtedly more inspired than the following "Talk Radio" and "Love Song," which come across as minor efforts. "Now You Love Me" picks up the pace, while "Valerie Yum" returns to garage-rock territory.

There's also the odd variation on the theme: "Welcome To The Third World," for instance, winks at funk and disco music, dusting off Taylor's falsetto, though to rather insignificant effect. "The Legend Of The Last Of The Outlaw Truckers Aka The Ballad Of Sheriff Shorty" is a weird little divertissement. "Musee D'Nougat" unveils an unexpected cosmic-ambient streak in the closing quarter-hour that brings down the curtain.

In 2009 the four decide to release, again on their own label, The Dandy Warhols Are Sound. It's the original mix of Welcome To The Monkey House, the one made by Russell Elevado and rejected by Capitol. The cover again features the peeled banana, while the sound is less polished and more natural. That's partly because the songs are essentially stripped of the synth-pop armor Rhodes had devised for them. The discrepancies come through clearly on tracks like "Scientist" or "We Used To Be Friends," with the latter losing some of the energy present in the version released at the time. Certainly less bombastic, and perhaps a touch more in line with the band's style, Elevado's mix might have seemed more fitting for the circumstances, but the feeling is that it wouldn't have changed the record's overall fate by much.

The 2010s

While the Dandy Warhols' trajectory kept declining, as mentioned, in 2010 Capitol definitively closed the books with the Portland foursome by releasing the compilation The Best Of The Capitol Years: 1995-2007. It includes pretty much all of the Americans' hits, but also Tony Lash's exclusive remix of "Every Day Should Be A Holiday" and a few alternate versions of tracks that differ from those originally released on their respective albums. A nice recap, useful above all for remembering that the Dandys too had their own proper season of glory.

To hear new material under the Dandy Warhols name, one had to wait until April 2012, when the band released This Machine through Beat the World and The End. Compared to previous records, the tones are more restrained, at times even muted: such is the case with the only single taken from it, "Well They're Gone", a twilit slow number that once again draws on the band's Bowie-derived source of inspiration (in this case, "The Man Who Sold The World"). This time the range of collaborations extends to David J of Bauhaus, who co-writes and contributes bass and backing vocals on "The Autumn Carnival", a track in which Holmstrom's abrasive guitars accompany the Americans' newfound pop sensibility.

The more outgoing chapters are to be found in "Enjoy Yourself" and "I Am Free" (backed by trombone and sax), both more sincere and sharper than their counterparts released in previous years. "Seti vs. the Wow! Signal" injects a freak streak into their alt-rock, standing out as one of the best cuts on this collection. The compilation also includes, among other things, a cover: it's "16 Tons", a song by country singer-songwriter Merle Travis.

Once again, the reception from both audience and critics is, in most cases, lukewarm.

Four years later, rekindling hope regarding the Dandy Warhols' artistic vein is Distortland. Not a masterpiece, nor a milestone, but rather a thoroughly honest pop-rock album which, moreover, marks the beginning of their partnership with the Canadian-American label Dine Alone. Compared to past work, it's perhaps a more pronounced pop component that makes the difference. The album ranges from the lysergic drift of "Search Party" (somewhere in Primal Scream territory) to the breezy punk-blues of "Pope Reverend Jim" and the loping midtempo of "Catcher In The Rye", not to mention the pseudo-garage drift of "You Are Killing Me".

The more restrained chapters are strategically placed halfway through the tracklist (the measured folk ballad "Give") and in the final slot (the electric lullaby "The Grow Up Song"). But the little gem of this collection is probably "STYGGO", a song that - both in title and sound - could have been written by Damon Albarn for his Gorillaz: a funk that's both tribal and synthetic, driven by a carefree mood reminiscent of the good old days. Could this be the dawn of a late-career comeback for the four Portland dandies?

In January 2019 comes the new album Why You So Crazy. Arriving on the band's twenty-fifth anniversary, the record represents a further step backward in a career marked by ups and downs.

Of the twelve songs - eleven, if we discount the false start of "Fred N Ginger" - it's hard to know what, if anything, is worth saving. Being truly generous, granting the Dandys the goodwill they've always inspired in us, one might point to the solemn psychedelia of "Next Thing I Know", if only to remind us where the band came from, or a "Forever" that tries to sink (out of shame?) into territory far darker than anything else encountered on this uncertain journey.

"Why You So Crazy" is indeed the triumph of the Dandy Warhols' weird side, but what comes of it is, at best, terribly flat ("Terraform") or, worse, a series of freaky, seemingly radio-friendly tracks that border on self-parody: the sped-up nursery rhyme "Highlife" and the genetically modified country of "Sins Are Forgiven" and "Small Town Girls" best represent the Americans' creative regression. On the other hand, the singles "Be Alright" and "Motor City Steel" at least have a slightly better chance of getting away with their sticky little choruses, but much of the effort is undone by arrangements that make you want to throw up your hands.

Not even the previously unreleased piano piece "Ondine" (probably written by Zia McCabe) can salvage anything from such a wreck. If anything, after everything heard up to that point, it feels like a cruelly ironic epilogue.

In spring 2024 the American band released a new work, titled ROCKMAKER.

Having fired off their star-guest cartridges in two singles that are, to put it mildly, utterly flavorless (if not worse) - namely "Danzig With Myself" with Frank Black and "I'd Like To Help You With Your Problem" arm in arm with Slash, and while waiting to see the same fate befall "I Will Never Stop Loving You", with Debbie Harry making a cameo appearance - all that's left to do is note how the Americans' formula has settled into an alt/pop-rock devoid of ideas or inspiration, turned entirely inward on itself, utterly inexpressive - all the more so for a band that not that many years ago was capable of writing songs like "Bohemian Like You" and "We Used To Be Friends".

Behind this horrendous cover art there is, unfortunately, nothing better waiting for us, just another forty-odd minutes that seem to never end. Perhaps a stray midtempo number here and there ("Teutonic Wine") or the occasional garage-blues jolt ("The Summer Of Hate") can still rekindle a bit of light in the hearts of the most die-hard fans. The truth, however, is that this incarnation of the Dandy Warhols really does keep leaving us with a bitter taste in our mouths.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google