May Madness W/O – Spanking the Monkey’s Zippered Banana

Welcome to the Monkey House introduces the world to The Dandy Warhols’ latest effort, the extremely atypical fourth album. Atypical in that you wouldn’t necessarily have expected the Stones influenced rockers to emerge with an 80’s pop album. Because that’s exactly what these boys and girls from Oregon have gone and done.

As a side note, they’re also dropping like flies. From the original line-up and second album Come Down only front-man Courtney Taylor-Taylor and impromptu bassist Zia McCabe remain. The brilliant Eric Hedford was sadly replaced with middling drummer Brent DeBoer and Peter Holmstrom’s guitars have gone from this album, introducing Peter Loew. And now Courtney himself is claiming he wants to quit the band. Guest musicians also abound, most notably, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran has been brought in to produce the album, and Simon LeBon pops up on backing vocals duties from time to time. They say that The Dandy Warhols are the best English band not to come from England, but now they could say they’re the best 80’s band not to have existed during the 80’s as well. And this is a bizarre swerve after the anthemic rock of Bohemian Like You.

Bizarre and somehow pleasing. Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia is a satisfying listen, but the drawn out self-indulgence of the band’s first two albums tended to render their sound a little hard to stomach. This is not to say that Courtney Taylor-Taylor is no longer a self-indulgent song-writer because it’s still his major failing. However, the tighter production and much more focussed sound of the band actually do their sound a lot of favours. I still miss Eric Hedford, especially with Brent DeBoer’s far less embellished style, but the lowered force of the guitars and a heavy synth and bass emphasis gives the band a more compelling sound. It’s a bit like Blur, two previously guitar orientated acts have suddenly come back saying, guitars? What guitars? It would appear the band have been listening to The Faint.

But that’s not to say that because it’s an 80’s revivalist album (in terms of style), that it’s bad. Because it really isn’t. Welcome to the Monkey house itself is barely a minute long, a scratchy electric guitar led groove that leads into the catchiest, most recognisable and most Dandy Warhols song on the album, hit single We used to be friends for the first and only time on the album, guitars are placed front and centre with a thundering drumming track and an interplay of fuzzy bass and kitschy effects on the synth, including fake hand-claps and so on. In a way, opener Welcome to the Monkey House is the key to the album, pointing at a dearth of originality in modern music and the world in general – the 80’s style throwback suddenly becomes quite obvious, and the parallels to movie and novel American Psycho aren’t hard to work out. Basically, they inject life into 80’s formulae and use the opportunity to hit against mass commercialism.

Wire is coming back again Elastica got sued by them
When Michael Jackson dies we’re covering Blackbird
And won’t it be absurd then when no one knows what song they just heard
Unless someone on the radio tells them first

We used to be friends, in this light, becomes a song about people abusing each other and moving right along. Plan A head back towards a song about songs, with the central refrain All of us singing about it, i.e. everyone singing about the same old same old and no one going anywhere new with it. It’s another lilting song, and one of the Dandy’s finest.

The dope (wonderful you) turns the band entirely away from guitars as a focus of attention, with a thudding processed beat and synth backwash. Zia McCabe then joins in with a buzzing bass hook that becomes the central melody of the song. Effective, but not a favourite of mine, it’s one of the numbers where you really hear the 80’s blasting through. I am a scientist is another post-80’s composition, allowing Courtney Taylor-Taylor to move from the high pitched falsetto of earlier songs to his more recognisable low growling monotone. Interestingly, his deadpan delivery fits this style of music better than traditional rock, echoing the deliveries of Dave Gahan or Neil Tennant. I am over it opens with the priceless line

Let’s see if we can do this in one toke… take

It’s another effective little number, once again bass-led, an almost unimaginable feat for a bassist who had apparently never touched a bass in her life before joining the band. The blasts of controlled electric guitar are extremely effective, and this is another strangely catchy deadpan number. Mid way through the album comes centre-piece The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone an oddly happy-clappy number that would sound like vintage Dandy’s were it not for the 80’s style production and multitude of synth effects. Once again, Courtney proves he has no vocal range between ridiculously high-pitch and ridiculously inexpressive moan. It’s like listening to some kind of unholy hybrid of Leonard Cohen with a less screechy Axl Rose. Crazy.

Insincere because I is a slightly forgettable atmospheric piece driven entirely by synth. It’s followed by the twinkly You were the last high, carried by a juddering bass beat and by a plethora of little noises bleeps and what-have-you. The chorus proves to be one of the catchiest on the disc, and this one ranks highly in my estimation. Heavenly opens with a choppy guitar and synth wash that sounds like it’s going to go into a bad 80’s weepy power ballad. Obviously, the Dandy’s are too clever for that, and the song turns into a surprisingly affecting and haunting piece, with an excellent electric guitar chorus and a rhythm lead by a gasp acoustic guitar. This one is up there with We used to be friends and is perhaps a more enduring melody. I am sound kicks back into bleeps and a bizarrely detune piano melody. Hit rock bottom gives Zia a great bass intro again, and Brent DeBoer adds to it with light but thudding drumming. The traditional oh-yeah style chorus is really very good to hear, and gradually the guitars make a more and more resounding mark on the song. Finally the album closes with You come in burned, opening with a beautifully distorted guitar riff, and somewhat unexpectedly turns back to bass led light poppy rhythms.

And it embodies my major problem with the album. For every one good melody, there’s a lot of noodling and messing about and bleeping. The closer isn’t bad, and has a compelling framing device of distorted grating guitar chords. For all the good ideas, Courtney Taylor-Taylor is still impossibly wayward, and essentially undisciplined. You think of the tightness of numbers like Bohemian like you and We used to be friends, but the majority of the album bumbles along at the pace of its choosing. And this is great if you make the leap and go with the band. But it isn’t music that lifts you up and carries you along. We end up having to make the effort that Courtney doesn’t seem to be willing to commit to. So, just like all The Dandy Warhols albums, I end up liking it because there’s something at the edge of hearing that is brilliant, but just not quite there in front of your eyes and ears.

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