Music CD's
"Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia"
the Dandy Warhols
The Dandy Warhols are, at heart, brazenly experimental, and thus they follow in the path of many other niche artists (John Osjazca, John Brion, etc.) and incorporate a wide variety of sounds and instruments into their poppy confections.
Their songs are like melodic stews, with a little of this and that thrown
in here and there in order to kick things up a notch. "Godless", the opening
number, combines a simple acoustic strumming pattern with a little bit of
guitar fuzz and a whole lot of jazz trumpet, creating a warm melody perfect
for coffee houses or East Village restaurants.
"Mohammed" takes a keyboard/guitar riff and throws in middle eastern drums and chants to give it a feel far more organic than Madonna's recent experiments with these same elements on Ray of Light . "Sleep" uses a sampled drum beat to back up a quiet duet between a steel stringed guitar and an upright bass. The varying musical elements in each track serves to give thirteen tales from urban bohemia an unpredictable, nuanced feel, making the album far more exciting. The best thing about this record, however, is lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor's hilarious, sardonic, and subtly brilliant lyrics. Taylor takes a risk on this record by choosing to both celebrate and mock the alternative scene The Dandy Warhols are such an indelible part of, yet the gutsiness pays off wonderfully. It's hard to quote individual song lyrics from this disc: each lyric is so well-written, so inexorably tied to every other lyric in the song that it's near impossible to pick and choose.
The most humorous track on the album is "Bohemian Like You," in which two alternative types revel in their own edginess (so what do you do?/oh yeah, I wait tables too/no I haven't heard your band/because you guys are pretty new/but if you dig vegan food/well, come over to my work/I'll have them cook you something natural).
"Horse Pills" is a lacerating, satirical number about aging, upper class women and their gold-digging, studmuffin younger boy-toys. "The Gospel," the album's final song, is much more sincere, however, as Taylor balances individual truth with a haunting refrain from the classic "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
The disc's problems lie in it's "musical
journey" aspect, as it is too manic and unfocused to take us steadily from
point A to point B. Certain songs seem out of place and out of tune with the
direction in which the work is trying to move
(see "Country Leaver," the lone twang fueled, country-rock number).
At other points, the album seems to have worked past its climax, past its denouement, and straight to its ultimate conclusion (for example, when the energetic "Get Off" leads into the quiet "Sleep"), yet it keeps on moving forward, beautifully but aimlessly. Ultimately, therefore, this record isn't a neoclassic journey for a new century, but who really cares about the beginning and end of a bumpy trek when the ride itself is so good
