The Dandy Warhols – Rockmaker Review
Rockmaker feels like a strong step back in the right direction from some of modern rock’s great provocateurs.
“Bands like The Dandy Warhols are the reason so many record company execs got fired in the 90s,” so says some music-biz type in Dig! (the 2004 rockumentary charting the fortunes and misfortunes of The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre). I may be misquoting slightly but it sums up the tendency record companies had in the late 90s for ploughing thousands of studio dollars into bands like The Dandys, on the strength of songs like Bohemian Like You. A tune which became a massive global hit after featuring in a Vodafone advert but was a trick the band had little intention of repeating. Instead, they were happy to burn through those studio dollars, and a shit ton of weed, in pursuit of their very own blend of psyche-drone shoegaze sprinkled with rock and roll magic (and creating some of my personal all-time favourite albums in the process).
The ironic thing about the Dandy Warhols, a band whose very existence - down to their knowingly pop-art name - seems to be an extended study in irony, is that they were more than capable of cranking out dozens of Bohemian Like You’s and selling a ton of Vodafone contracts …they just didn’t wanna. Whether that’s down to bratty rebellion, an anti-sellout stance or just pure stoner laziness, only the Dandys really know. But after Bohemian took them round the world, and Capitol records pushed them into recording a slick and shiny follow-up, they retreated to Portland and used the proceeds to build their own studio space, the Odditorium - a place where they could just hang out, jam, and occasionally y’know…cut a few tracks.
More on the back story later, but what of Rockmaker, which marks three decades since the group formed and features contributions from Frank Black, Slash and Debbie Harry? I’m not sure if it’s to the Dandy’s credit or detriment that contributions from such rock royalty - none of them known for being particularly wallflower-ish - are subsumed wholly into the band’s sound, to the point where I wouldn’t have realised they were even featured.
Maybe a devout G’n’R head would be able to spot Slash’s wah-wahed guitar shredding on the acid rock swagger of I’d Like to Help You With Your Problem, which feels like the soundtrack to every ‘Nam movie. And once you know it’s her, there’s no mistaking Debbie Harry’s angelic croon on the closing, I Will Never Stop Loving You, arguably the best track on the album yet the least representative of its sound as whole. I’m picturing a moodboard pasted with black and white shots from Hollywood’s Golden Age, all ballgowns, chandeliers and ennui. In the execution this is topped off with tinkling piano keys, Debbie Harry’s inimitable siren song and Courtney Taylor-Taylor plumbing the depth of his range for a gravelly whisper like cigarette smoke in your ear.
Something that’s not abated over 30 years is the Dandy’s love of a pun, that and their penchant for blending elements from across what you might very broadly term ‘alternative rock’ and synthesizing something that kinda sounds like loads of bands yet also sounds just like the Dandys. Danzig with Myself is a prime example of this - something between 80s stadium rock, shoegaze and industrial - and given how much of their own material is now available to repurpose, they may well be dancing with themselves. Oh yeah and Frank Black apparently features somewhere but I can’t spot him.
Another band I didn’t expect to be mentioning in a Dandy Warhols review is Garbage, a project whose sound owed a great deal to thousands of 90s studio dollars. But there’s definitely something in the scuzzy guitars and the heavy use of keyboards and drum loops driving Rockmaker that takes me back to that turn of the century electronic rock sound.
As you’d expect from the Dandy’s maximal ‘throw as many influences as possible into the pot and see what comes out’ approach, Rockmaker is a mixed bag, and not always in the best way. But it makes up for its patchiness by reminding you how the Dandy Warhols so easily could’ve been massive popstars. Almost every track has an instantly catchy hook, and I guess they must be working with a new producer because despite genre-hopping, the band manage to try on a dozen outfits and always come out looking stylish.
Unfortunately ideas run a little dry in the latter stages and it feels like the band are going for a look considerably younger than their years. Must’ve Always Been a Thing is infectiously catchy and makes good use of Taylor-Taylor’s hipster drawl, but any song that reels off a list of drugs as a chorus has to answer to QOTSA’s Feel Good Hit of the Summer, and this falls some way short. Real People is narrated by the self-deprecating “why am I like this?!” rock and roll fuck-up that Viagra Boys do much better, and 0ne can only assume the lyrics, which feel lifted from the pages of a teenage diary, are ironic because they sure don’t feel like the thoughts of a man well into his 50s. Fortunately the album closes with the aforementioned I Will Never Stop Loving You, leaving a luxurious taste in the mouth to end with.
When the Dandys retreated to the Odditorium, they took their psychedelic slacker-shoegaze as far as it would go over a couple of sprawling albums. The following decade saw them then concentrate this blend with each release getting progressively shorter and more focused. Until 2019’s Why You So Crazy, which seemed to squeeze everything good from their sound leaving a barely listenable, confusing mess. Was it a joke, or an experiment that misfired? As always with the Dandys it’s impossible to tell, but Rockmaker feels like a strong step back in the right direction from some of modern rock’s great provocateurs.