By most standards, the Dandy Warhols have it pretty good. Unlike so many bands swept up in the 1990s major-label alt-rock signing blitz, they survived a decade-long stint on Capitol with their sanity intact. Though they haven't scraped the top 40 charts in any country for almost 10 years, they can still tour respectably sized 1,000-capacity clubs around the world. And, having built their own studio in their hometown of Portland, they can produce albums and art projects at their own leisurely pace.
However, as the Dandys' case illustrates, there's a fine line between self-sufficiency and purgatory-- at this point, they're no longer a threat to the mainstream, nor an influential force in any indie micro-scene of note. At their turn-of-the-millennium peak, the Dandy Warhols represented a cheekily decadent antidote to the sincerity and self-importance of cardigan-clad indie rock, but as those orthodoxies have waned, so too has the Dandys' power of provocation. Their nebulous standing is best measured by the fact there's now a whole TV show devoted to skewering Portland hipsterdom that hasn't even deigned to make them a target.
But Dandys frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor is nothing if not a keen observer, and the band's latest album offers up a surprisingly self-effacing line: "I used to be cool." Sure, he sings it in a droll, Tim Curry-esque drawl that suggests he's singing in the voice of another, but the song from which it originates, "Enjoy Yourself", seemingly makes peace with the fact that his life-of-the-party days are behind him; to wit, the song's title is rhymed with "enjoy your health." It's an early indication that This Machine is indeed the most sober Dandy Warhols album to date, reining in the stoner-rock sprawl, the curled-lip snark, and bad puns endemic to so many Dandys releases. At 43 minutes, it's their shortest album yet and, mercifully, about half an hour shorter than 2008's endless …Earth to the Dandy Warhols....
Where Dandys records tend to hew strongly toward either droning 1960s psychedelia or synth-powered new wave, This Machine attempts to reconcile the two by homing in on that mid-80s moment when post-punkers started to bask in psychedelic sunshine; one of the key instigators of that movement-- David J of Bauhaus-cum-Love & Rockets-- even chips in with a co-writing cameo on "The Haunted Carnival". It's a good look for the Dandys: On that song and the opening "Sad Vacation", Taylor-Taylor maintains a coolly unobtrusive presence, singing in hushed tones as shocks of feedback attempt to destabilize their steady backbeats, while the moody ballad "Well They're Gone" successfully pulls off a deft balance of Parisian chanson and dubby rhythms. And if the robo-punk instrumental "Alternative Power to the People" undermines its intensity with a flurry of annoying faux record-scratch effects, at the very least, it'll give you something new to mix out of Tones on Tail's "Go!" the next time you spin at your local pub's Goth Night.
Given its promising start, you might be inclined to place This Machine on the level of the Dandy's superior first three albums-- but doing so will make you feel like a touchdown-bound wide receiver who drops the ball before hitting the end zone. The Dandys' have never been an especially political band, and while their cover of Merle Travis' "16 Tons" may give them a backhanded way to address America's economic troubles, its bump-and-grind swing-- featuring Los Lobos' Steve Berlin on sax-- is incongruously hammy to the point of making light of the working-class woe described within. And where Taylor-Taylor has traditionally used his elastic voice to communicate various degrees of disaffection, on This Machine's would-be power-pop pick-me-ups, "SETI vs the WOW! Signal" and "I Am Free", he just sounds bored-- "there's music deep inside of me," he claims on the latter, but his monotone delivery suggests he's really singing about embalming fluid. "Don't Shoot She Cried" attempts to save face by hearkening back to the Dandys' hazy, psych-drone roots, and yet this six-minute non-starter serves only to remind you that there's a new Spiritualized album out. At the outset, This Machine seems like an apt title for a record that surges forth with a wiry, motorik momentum; by the end, it becomes an all-too-fitting descriptor of a band going through the motions.
