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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Album deserves a major re-pressing,
By
This review is from: Dandy's Rule OK? (The Dandy Warhols) (Audio CD)
A major re-issue of this album would be nice. Quite simply, it's one of the greatest pop-rock albums ever made. The Dandy Warhols are led by enigmatic singer, songwriter and guitarist Courtney Taylor, a man with a sardonic wit and big ego that many critics found hard to tolerate in the beginning. Nonetheless, the Dandy's came along at a time in rock 'n' roll when the culture needed their fuzzed-out tunes and psychadelic outlook.
This CD begins with that mysterious beep that opened all those early 1980s Duran Duran albums. Following that bit of history, "Young Thomas Pancake" quietly introduces the band, surrounded by hesitant, light clapping, as if no one is quite sure who he or she is clapping for. "The Dandy Warhols' T.V. Theme Song" is pure candy rock, nearly an updated Monkees sound that is upbeat and peppy; the band is clearly full of itself, and it's hard not to get sucked in to the sound immediately. "Ride" and "Best Friend" are slower paced, fuzzy tunes with soft vocals, a trippy vibe and dreamy lyrics. Taylor seems to thrive on these breezy, catchy tunes. "Not Your Bottle" captures the typical Dandy Warhols outlook, with hazy lyrics like "Phil wants to be a rock star, but he's a bit uptight." Never hiding their relish for rock 'n' roll fame, decadence and an elegantly wasted mentality, the Warhols make this stuff look easy. On "Grunge Betty," Taylor's voice is nearly a mock of Kurt Cobain's, full of pseudo rage and repetative choruses. "Genius" seems to question the legitimacy of artists that take their own lives, only to be worshipped later. Taylor seems to want the world to realize that he too can write catchy grunge tunes, while loving life in the process. The last three ultra-long "rave-ups" provide major bang for the buck, not that the first 13 gems weren't awesome enough. This is an outstanding non-major-label debut record, created by a band who spared nothing to enhance its sound via a multitude of instruments such as mandolins and sitars. The drums are usually snappy, and the lyrics are sung with a lazy, detached feel. While the Warhols may have had a sense of their own greatness early on, it remains to be seen if the rock 'n' roll mainstream will buy into their slacker attitude and wasted experiences and perceptions. Like their contemporaries such as Hum, the Warhols have had a little difficulty climbing the hump to the land of superstardom (see Smashing Pumpkins for that). Here's hoping the band does it soon. By the way, that puzzling Duran Duran beep from the '80s also ends this awesome album.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
They rule... OK?,
This review is from: Dandy's Rule OK? (The Dandy Warhols) (Audio CD)
Few bands start off sounding as polished as the Dandy Warhols do in "Dandy's Rule, OK?" While this Portland debut isn't the best that they've done, and they clearly lack musical direction, the final third of the album is a sonic masterpiece... and the rest of it ain't bad either.The opener of "Dandy's Rule, OK?" just barely avoids being pretentious, with the here-we-are "Introduction by Young Tom" and the catchy but painfully simplistic "Dandy Warhol's T.V. Theme Song Lyrics" (sample lyric: "Hey La, See Saw/Hey Ra, Hee Ha"). But with the growling guitar kicking off "Ride," it's clear that they've gotten their footing with some slow, ponderous rock. It shifts into peppy pot rock ("(Tony, This Song Is Called) Lou Weed") and mid-tempo psychedelic pop ("Nothin' To Do," "Dick"). The album climaxes in a big way with: a three-track, twenty-two minute sonic sweep that starts with the eerie "Prelude: It's A Fast Driving Rave Up With The Dandy Warhols Sixteen Minutes," before speeding up into the experimental-rock "It's A Fast Driving Rave Up With The Dandy Warhols Sixteen Minutes" and finishing with the increasingly ominous "Finale: It's A Fast Driving Rave Up With The Dandy Warhols Sixteen Minutes." At their worst, the Dandy Warhols resemble basic imitators of seventies rock. At their best (the grand finale), they resemble the Flaming Lips, with their shimmering alt-rock and unusual instrumentation (is that an alarm clock I hear?). They come across as a "fun" band -- the sort of music that is nice to listen to, without trying to be deep. This is the psychedelica that dates back to classic 60s and 70s alt-rock: Drugs, bohemian ponderings and a healthy ability to flip between the gritty and the ethereal. And it's a bit more exploratory than the band's later albums, poking around musically to see where it belongs. Your basic guitars, bass and synthesizers form a shimmery, slightly gritty wall of sound (sufficiently that you won't notice weak lyrics like "I'm gonna know everything/know everything that was true/seen everything I could see/been everything I could be..."). Urban and tinged with the bohemian, "Dandy's Rule OK?" is a nice debut from a moderately talented band. Certainly worth checking out for fans of psychedelic rock-pop.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Promising debut...only hints at how good they've become.,
By
This review is from: Dandy's Rule OK? (The Dandy Warhols) (Audio CD)
If you're not familiar with this band yet, it's probably best to start out with this, their debut CD. It's a good recording (and to be fair, some sounds on successive CD's were borrowed so cleanly that they might as well have been sampled from this one), and it's easy to see why Capitol snatched them up after this was originally released independently. They only bettered themselves as songwriters on their next CD ("The Dandy Warhols Come Down") on their way to putting out one of the best releases from anyone in the last 20 years ("Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia"). If you start out with either of the other two, you might feel that this CD is a disappointment in comparison. That's not entirely fair, but as Dennis Hopper said in "Waterworld", "Growth is progress". It's a good CD, worth owning, and it would be REALLY good for anyone else to have released...but it's not the Dandys' best effort.Oh, yeah...there are a few good nudie shots of the band in the liner notes booklet, too.
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