The Dandy Warhols ‘Rockmaker’ Review: Portland collective delivers their most rocking albums in years, featuring unexpected musical guest appearances.
Over their 30-year career, Portland, Oregon’s The Dandy Warhols have been impossible to pigeonhole: a tad too Anglophile to fit into the U.S. rock scene, yet too aggressive and rough around the edges to defy their American roots. This made them sometimes difficult to market (although they had sizable hits with Bohemian Like You and Not If You Were The Last Junkie on Earth) but garnered them a loyal fanbase, who stuck with the group long after their 90’s success.
This has allowed the group to continue to explore their eclectic tastes, and now they have emerged with the aptly titled Rockmaker, their darkest, most rocking, grimiest album to date.
The humorously titled single Danzig With Myself is a true curiosity. Initially meant to be a Misfits style jam, it turned into something slower and stranger: a drunken shuffle featuring Frank Black on guitar with frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s delayed, distorted spoken/sung vocals that speak to present day America:
“Some days it’s just so obvious
Some days insidious
But half the people alive today
Are fucking idiots
Surely it’s they who brought about our end of days
But I’ve never been totally convinced that we deserve to be here anyways.”
Black is also featured on Love Thyself, the most straightforward track on the album, which sounds like a lost alternative pop gem from the 90’s.
The Summer of Hate takes things in a 70’s glam direction, with handclap percussion and T.Rex’ish backing vocals anchoring its disaffected vibe, before launching into I’d Like To Help Your Problem, another 70’s-drenched tune, featuring a snarling guitar solo from Slash that takes things into even more unexpected territory, while The Cross is a metal/disco hybrid that makes for one of Rockmaker’s most distinctive earworms.
That previously mentioned disaffected attitude toward our dire political present fuels much of the album, from the bummed-out funk of Root of All Evil, which features a groovy bassline and Zia McCabe’s horn-stab keys over lyrics like “The idiots rule coz they conspire/political minded people should all retire.” to It Must’ve Always Been A Thing, an electronic fueled track offering a history lesson of repetitious debauchery through the ages, fueled by “alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, nicotine” that recalls Queens of The Stone Age’s laundry list of illicit substances in Feel Good Hit of The Summer.
The album ends with another high-profile collaboration, with Blondie’s Debbie Harry providing dreamy backing vocals on the ethereal, romantic ballad I Will Never Stop Loving You, which sounds like a James Bond theme distilled through a trip-hop filter, ending things in a swirling, narcotic haze.
Rockmaker is a strident, surly triumph, and one of The Dandy Warhols best albums to date, proving they have plenty of gas left in the tank, willing to add new dynamics and experimentation to their unique sound. And they should make for some fine bangers on their current tour.