TRML’s Sound Selection #55

TRML's Sound Selections #55: The Dandy Warhols - ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down

The Dandy Warhols – …The Dandy Warhols Come Down

While the Pacific Northwest was fertile ground for the grunge movement in the early Nineties, by the middle of the decade there was another musical movement blossoming where grunge was wilting. The new psychodalia movement was well under way when The Dandy Warhols released their second studio album “…The Dandy Warhols Come Down.” Greatly expanding upon the sound of their first album from two years prior, the Dandys stretched out into more refined power-pop and combined it with sprawling psychedelic jams. The songs maintain the signature catchy hooks and balance of humor and the serious, but now they gel together in a fluid and sometimes trippy fashion. Pulsing drone guitar ebbs and flows and mutates into jangly riffs punctuated with bouncy synth lines as Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s chameleon-like vocals bid the listener good morning or raunchily describe their love interest in Minnesota. It’s a winning formula that has carried this band through all these years.

I’ve been a fan of The Dandy Warhols for decades and have long sung their praises. They are definitely in the top five bands I listen to most out of my massive music collection. I just find myself coming back again and again to their sound like an old pair of jeans. It’s comfortable and it has been there through many phases of my life. Even their new output slots right in with the songs from 20+ years ago and brings that sense of comfort, which isn’t something every band can provide. This isn’t to say their sound is stale, far from it. If anything I’d say it means they know how to stay fresh without constantly reinventing the wheel each album. It’s a skill that makes for a great listening experience for the veteran fans and the ones discovering them via beloved album reviews like this one.