Photo: Dandywarhols.com

We are Cooler Than You: The Dandy Warhols, Welcome to the Monkey House

by Jeremy Horelick

The Dandy Warhols have spent three albums proving they're cooler than you'll ever hope to be. Now, with their fourth, they prove they also have more friends than you'll ever hope to have.

Welcome to the Monkey House, a title cribbed from Kurt Vonnegut's classic 1968 short story collection, parades every ex-Duran Duran member short of Warren Cuccurullo alongside former Lemonhead Evan Dando and Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers, all of whom must be equally baffled by the quartet's latest explorations in synth. With the help of their contributors' switch-flipping, knob-dialing and bleeding-ear falsettos, front man Courtney Taylor-Taylor and company have fashioned what amounts to a Velvet Underground Railroad, a swift retreat from their classic-rock riffs that once bore the Lou Reed imprimatur. Fitting, then, that the Dandys should name their new Portland studio and conceptual chem lab The Odditorium, an art den that serves as both a proving ground for their musical arcana and the vanishing point for the fat hooks that took their 'Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia' platinum throughout much of Europe.

Of course, tastes do change, labels get fickle, and fans grow formula-weary, all of which is good news for these connoisseurs of the au courant. Besides, no real music fan believes artists should be tarred for daring to climb out from their pigeonholes, say, with MIDIs in their fret hands.

'Monkey House' isn't without its flashes. "We Used to Be Friends," despite an eerie resemblance to Roxette's late-eighties abortion "The Look," seizes on manic keyboards, catchy handclaps and Taylor-Taylor's eunuch-inspired upper register for a radio-friendly first single. Then there's the Dandys-Dando collaboration, "You Were The Last High," which tries on pitch bends and tremolos as it relishes its own breathy indifference. "So maybe you loved me," Taylor-Taylor sings, "but now maybe you don't. And maybe you'll call me, maybe you won't."

The album also boasts some earnest experiments. On "The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone," nary a vocal drops below G-above-high-C, a conceit that might be more understandable were Taylor-Taylor's natural mezzo-tenor not so seductive and self-assured. But then there are puzzlers such as "Plan A" and the faux-Bowie "I am a Scientist," which seem eccentric for their own sake and mostly disrupt whatever momentum 'Monkey House' manages to build.

BUY WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE HERE

"The Dope" opens with the sort of pulsing, persistent fuzz bass that gives your early-bird neighbors homicidal stirrings, while "Insincere Because I" spends a full minute mucking about in the electronic bayou before morphing into a free-floating hymn worthy of a Spiritualized B-side.

All told, Monkey House is hardly the total implosion that some fans and pundits have deemed it. On first pass the album might feel like a lateral or even backward step. After repeated spins, however, its subtler arrangements take up digs in your head like pesky squatters who one day, inexplicably, start doing chores or even paying rent.

18 September 03

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