More than anything, the Dandy Warhols are perfectly named: The band seems consumed with scenester mannerisms, with leader Courtney Taylor acting as a socialite participant-observer-- just inside enough to know what's going on, but removed enough to snipe from the sidelines. One sequence from the documentary Dig!-- a document of the band's quest for fame via unapologetic poseurism-- illustrates this perfectly: The band breaks into the Brian Jonestown Massacre's disgusting apartment, taking pictures of themselves amongst the detritus. From a perspective of authenticity, the Dandys are really easy to hate for the way they drape themselves in grimy finery like hack method actors preparing for a role. In the past, however, they've displaced this conception in the best way possible, with highly enjoyable singles ("Boys Better", "Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth", "Bohemian Like You"), and one solid LP, 13 Tales from Urban Bohemia.
Aside from their highpoints, however, the Dandy Warhols are most known for feeding into their worst and most indulgent musical instincts: meandering psychedelia, implausible conceptual larks, and skit-length ideas stretched to epic proportions. All of which adds up, more or less, to the entirety of ...Earth to the Dandy Warhols..., the band's sixth album, and a how-to guide for outsize imitations of rock'n'roll debauchery and spirituality. It's no surprise that its prevailing themes-- outer space, dubious Eastern mysticism, "Talk Radio"-- are all known for being infinitely large and depthless. "The World the People Together (Come On)" seemed by itself an odd choice for a first single, especially from a band that's had a few winners in the past-- it's mostly wordless, some vibey chanting that suggests the Go! Team after taking their Ritalin-- but it does effectively catalog Earth's (and the band's) schtick of glacially paced and arena-sized but ultimately pointless sentiment.
Earth is a whopping 70 minutes long, and at no point in it do we get an idea of what exactly the fuck the Dandy Warhols are trying to tell us. Like one of those New Age retreats that turns out to be a pyramid scheme, you emerge on the other side of the album a bit worn out, confused, and bitter for lost time. (The final track, for example, is a nearly 15-minute minute studio dickaround about a museum for candy bars.) "Wasp in the Lotus" is a "Sexy Sadie" redux, about the sour intentions just beneath claims of transcendence, and they play it po-faced enough. But then they fall into that exact same trap on "Mission Control", with meaningless advice like: "It's not quite like you think it's/ Not that obvious". When they stick to what they're good at-- lifting musical ideas from the late-60s-- they still sometimes succeed: "Love Song" is a hyper-jangly folk-rock pastiche, but while "Valerie Yum" pulls from Tommy James and the Shondells, it does so for seven minutes, the last four of which sees Taylor exposing his real reason for writing the song. Here's a hint: remove the "erie" from "Valerie", then add the "Yum", and repeat it out loud. See what he did there?
That said, I can't hate on the Dandy Warhols only for their simplistic parody. If they were really good at commenting on celebrity and hipster culture from an aesthetic remove-- and if they could write good, empathetic songs about their subjects-- they'd be Pulp, and, well, there can be only one Pulp. What I can take issue with, though, is the fact that the Dandy Warhols, perhaps more here than on any previous album, are trying to have it both ways: Commenting on the absurdity of something while unquestioningly embodying it, and in the process adopting irony as an ironic performative schtick. All of this is neatly encapsulated in the abysmally titled "Welcome to the Third World", a tale of a "college town" refugee burning a fatty on a tropical beach while avoiding the nuisance of shotguns on the dancefloor. It's quite literal, of course, but "Third World" makes it only fair to call the Dandys on their bullshit; after all, everybody hates a tourist.
