The Dandy Warhols

The Dandy Warhols Are Sound (Beat the World)

By Selena Fragassi
Published: July 18th, 2009 | 12:32am

The Dandy Warhols’ decision to release their latest album,

The Dandy Warhols Are Sound,

on Bastille Day marks a clear cause for celebration. Finally, after seven years, the band’s personally beloved album is finding the light of day.

The story goes that, back in '01 and '02 when the album was originally recorded, Capitol Records was not too fond of the final product and decided to remix the record themselves, which produced the highly successful Welcome To the Monkey House. While the band traveled through years of personal and professional developments, the music collected dust, to their dismay. Now, with the same catching banana-peel graphic, The Dandy Warhols Are Sound includes original mixes of “Burned” (clocking in at just over seven minutes), the band’s most recent commercial success, “We Used To Be Friends,” and 10 others.

Although there are some distinct differences in both albums’ sounds, The Dandy Warhols Are Sound seems more of an artistic indulgence — a perfectionist need to prove the band got it right the first time around. While it may be a great collector’s item for the die-hards, there’s really nothing new to the untrained ear or novice Dandy Warhols appreciator that Welcome To the Monkey House didn’t already cover.

If taken on its own merit, this latest release does a dutiful trek through the band’s quirky (at times prog rock, at times electro-pop) sound on noteworthy tracks like “Plan A” and the piano-heavy “I Am Sound,” but it seems a little too late. Instead of rehashing the past, the band would have been better moving on with new material.

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