Double Dandies

Dandy Warhols at Cargo on 30th August and then at the Hammersmith Palais on 26th October.

Dandies are back and they're older, but are they wiser? At Cargo we get the opportunity to get quite up close to the band, it is tiny (they also hang out in the beer garden beforehand). Sauntering on stage looking louche, jaded and slightly sleazy, it takes a few songs for the band to warm up. Pre album release, it was pretty much a greatest hits set list, with a handful of new songs thrown in. They were ripping off Duran Duran years before the Killers. A greatest hits setlist is a pretty good prospect!

They are also quite ambivalent about their own audience, at one point Courtney pointed out that if they’d released ‘Last High’ now instead of 2 ½ years ago there would have been "a lot more assholes in here than there are now.” After a collective “!!!” from the audience he did a sly little wink, knees turned to jelly, and it was all ok again. By the end Courtney’s voice completely gave out during ‘Smoke it’ and that was it. For this show.

The Hammersmith Palais gig was part of the official tour and now we’ve all heard the new album. Its unfortunate that, apart from a handful of songs, the new stuff sucks quite a bit. People were visibly bored when they launched into some of the new songs, but they always pulled it back with a 'Get Off', 'Last Junkie' or 'Bohemian'. Having said that, the prog guitar wig outs were quite fun to watch, but the 1 ½ hour set seemed to filled with .. um filler!

Extra bonus points came when Courtney got his top off quite early on in the set, but this didn’t distract us from the fact that his voice is cracked beyond belief.

Have the Dandies learned anything? Perhaps too much musical freedom is a bad thing, but if you cut Taylor Taylor in half it would say “sex, drugs and rock & roll” all the way through.