High notes for Dandy Warhols lie in the past
What was made glaringly apparent during the Dandy Warhols' show at the Wilbur Theatre Tuesday night was just how good a band they can be - and just how painfully bad a band they were also capable of being. It was almost as if two distinct Dandys showed up to the party: the old Warhols who played ecstatic, hook-laden pop confections like "Boys Better" and "Bohemian Like You," and the new crew mired in barely cohering, quicksand-sludgy songs such as "Welcome to the Third World" and "Mission Control."
Unfortunately, those latter misfires and others, for the most part, happened to come from the foursome's latest album, ". . . Earth to the Dandy Warhols . . .," and the first disc to be released on its own Beat the World Records label since being let go by its old record company, Capitol. In other words, you wanted to root for these guys.
But listening to hokey new jokes such as the faux-country of "The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers AKA the Ballad of Sheriff Shorty" (think reheated Southern Culture on the Skids, a style that does not suit the Dandys), the title of the band's new album seemed revealing in all the wrong ways.
It's as if the Dandys - never the most grounded of bands, granted - had lost touch with what made their sound so cool in the first place (atmospheric psychedelia filtered through crisp chords and clever lyrics). And now, perhaps unmoored as the result of too many chemicals and not enough ideas, here they were floating aimlessly, adrift in space.
There were flashes, however, of the old DayGlo brilliance shining amid the muddy new material: slight but enjoyable baubles like the Spiritualized-meets-Byrdsian "Love Song" found lead guitarist Peter Holmstrom working up a quicksilvery jangle on a Rickenbacker guitar while singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor insinuated himself inside the tune's circular melody with a half-sung, half-whispered coo.
Likewise, "Wasp in the Lotus," which came at the tail end of a set that picked up late, distortion-and echo-drenched momentum, was a blissed-out wash of churning psych-pop set to flashing white lights. If nothing else, the Dandys proved that you could indeed fully fill a theater with surround sound even without a bass guitar (bassist-keyboardist Zia McCabe opted for synthesizer, maracas, and harmonica).
Ultimately, the brightest highlights came from older source material. "Mohammed," which opened the set, was a swirling gyrus that easily made up for Taylor-Taylor's vocal having been all but subsumed in the sound mix. And, of course, despite its unwieldy title, "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth," saved for later like a decadent dessert, was a model of perfect pop concision: sexy and smart, funny and effervescent. In other words, absolutely, delectably dandy. 