It took me two weeks of listening, reading, and thinking, but here it is.
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Lucrative as it appears, fashionable, cutting edge, provocative -- the music industry itself is little concerned with process. Driven by sales, trends, airplay, artists usually appear with as few warts as possible, using the airwaves as a conduit to brandish thoroughly finished products. Even the recording process itself seems archival, aged -- a finite medium such as tape is dated as soon as the playback hits the speakers. Mastered, packaged, even with the greatest of possible concepts, art, and song structures, the product does not suggest process. Process itself is betrayed by business, where contractual obligations simply do not have time for becoming, for unfolding themes, or meandering.
Enter Capitol Records, 1997-2005, The Dandy Warhols' playground for eclectic pop, electrifying drones, disregard for genre, and a penchant for sheer creativity and exploration. While the surface showed disappointing American promotion and radio play (and ultimately, some disappointing sales), alongside cultural hits -- Veronica Mars or Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans should know what I'm talking about -- the Dandys were busy recording album after album behind the scenes, mixing them, and experiencing rejection from the label. With the release of documentary DiG! and The Black Album, fans readily learned that The Dandy Warhols Come Down (1997) required a second attempt from the band. As for the slick, playful Welcome to the Monkey House (2003), I suspect that significantly fewer fans knew that the Dandys' original mix was rejected by Capitol.
Process. Usually fans gain little insight into music recording processes -- save for rumors of secret shelved concept records, some collecting dust, others ritualistically burned. Until now. The Dandy Warhols Are Sound (July 14, 2009), their second Capitol Records rejection, their original mix and conceptual vision of Monkey House.
Where the original alienated some fans with its dance / new wave sound -- for some fans took the Dandys not as eclectic and playful, but rather cornered them with expectations that the band stick to the psychedelic or standard rock aspects of their sound -- Are Sound sparkles with visions of Odditorium or Warlord of Mars (2005) while developing the landscape cleared with Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia (2000). The link between those two records should have been clear to those paying attention -- the Dandys reclaiming more adventurous sonic territory in the 2005 release after clearing out their earlier layered recording techniques in the airy 2000 release.
With a clear conceptual link in place developing the band's eclectic dance sound while utilizing the tools from their psychedelic catalog, the arrows should clearly point to Earth to the Dandy Warhols (2008), the band's first independent release in over a decade. One might venture to call that studio release the Dandys' mature statement or development of their sound, which seemed to point in the direction of combining new wave or dance elements with their dense, meandering drones.
If you didn't catch it the first time through the Dandys' catalog, buy Are Sound and listen to all of their records in order. The development of the band's early, eclectic sound morphs into a smooth incorporation of their playful genre-bending, and what might have seemed to be bizarre risk-taking in the later records (such as Odditorium) now seems to be a rather clear development or expansion of an earlier theme. That earlier theme, of course, is now clearly, readily available in Are Sound.
Under the auspices of Beat the World Records, the Dandys' preferred mixes of the Monkey House material only sometimes seem unfinished or unpolished. More often than not, the unfinished sense of the record come from intriguing song structure changes between this and the "official" Capitol version, as well as from the completely different, new tonal worlds that appear -- those worlds previously left unheard on the official release.
Where the dance songs on Monkey House sound crowded and hectic -- certainly dense, thorough, intense, layered, the mixes on Are Sound feature more "air;" they are more open, with more acoustic instrumentation, different guitar sounds, different accents that were not fully featured on the official version. This is what makes the subversive version, the hidden version, the band's version, so much fun. What was buried before is now revealed -- woodwinds on "Scientist," backwards guitar and sick, rhythmic synth on "We Used to be Friends," haunting acoustic guitar on "Heavenly" and "I am Over It" (perhaps the biggest gem unearthed with the new mixes). There is enough that is different here to justify buying this record on its own -- it stands not as an artifact, but as an artistic statement, a statement of conceptual direction straight from the band.
If you're looking for a key to their two latest records, this is it; what's best is that the key comes not in the form of The Dandy Warhols For Dummies, but rather with the interpretative depth of the Rosetta Stone. The key is not merely handed to you, but is buried in the sounds, the parts, the song structures, as signs to be connected as you find them, in the later material, or developments of earlier themes, or both.
One particularly intriguing line runs from "Godless" or "Mohammed" through "I am Over It" to "Holding Me Up." Or, "I am Over It" through "Holding Me Up" to "Beast of All Saints" or even "The World The People Together" (the reason I say this is that I previously thought that "Holding Me Up" was the most important song in the Dandys' catalog, beautifully displaying the depth of their sound, their meandering style, their effortless acoustic rhythm, their brooding synth sound). Beneath lush, layered acoustic guitars, with meandering strumming (as opposed to percussive, relentless strumming), rest strong synth lines, along with a steady drumbeat, and the characteristic hushed vocals. Sprinkled throughout are atmospheric guitar lines, sparse, creating a wide landscape that draws fully on your imagination, your knowledge, and your sensory experience.
While some hold the band to their psychedelic pop origins, the development of their dance, psychedelic, new wave sound in their last three records is truly psychedelic. A full engagement of musical technology (in the Byrds' tradition), a full engagement of your senses and sensory experience, a full engagement with your soul, playing on the tension of your body -- a body which cannot release your soul, and yet is not a prison. It's deceptively calm, not psychedelic-crazy, but it leads your soul along a path that visits multiple worlds. Through the timbre of the voices, the space of the instruments, and the arrangements, the path travels as far as you are willing to follow.
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I have always said to friends that music critics don't like the Dandys' recent records because music critics cannot distinguish pretention from talent -- or worse, they cannot tolerate pretention, at the cost of missing the treasures of the talent involved. Even more, where criticism longs for boxes and labels, the Dandys move around the sonic spectrum, resulting in a particularly rewarding, playful challenge to your imagination. Should you choose to accept it.