Photo credit: Benjamin Wick
While they’ve managed to remain nominally active, releasing something new every few years, The Dandy Warhols have suffered under the law of diminishing returns since their 2000 breakthrough Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia. It hasn’t been a steep decline—they were never lofty enough to drop off dramatically—but while they still produce the occasional earworm, they’ve yet to match that album’s back-to-back catchiness. Even if they did, who knows if it’d be as successful in today’s marketplace as Urban Bohemia was then, when the burgeoning garage rock revival created fertile soil for the group’s glammy neo-psychedelic pop, but in any case, the Dandys could certainly use another album like it about now, which makes the new Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia Live at the Wonder come off as just a tad desperate.
To be fair, there is the pretext that the new release was recorded during a tour commemorating the 13th anniversary of the original (because it has “Thirteen” in the title, get it?), but it feels less like a longstanding group fondly, justifiably, looking back and more like a good business move from an ever-shrewd band that knows where its bread is buttered, not that the sizable crowd of fans at Turner Hall Ballroom seemed to have a problem with their taking a trip down memory lane, whatever the motivation for it may be. After openers Bonfire Beach, an agreeably jangly So-Cal post-punk outfit with a distinct lack of charisma, the headliners took the stage, looking, as they always do, like a stylist’s idea of how a rock band is supposed to dress, circa 1996.
Although the setlist contained a few digressions, including an impromptu sing-along rendition of “Every Day Should Be a Holiday” from their 1997 sophomore effort …The Dandy Warhols Come Down, the selections predictably stuck mostly to Thirteen Tales. It was enjoyable, too, since whatever missteps they’ve made over the ensuing years, songs like “Godless,” “Shakin’” and even the overexposed single “Bohemian like You” still hold up well. The bombastic sound, while enhancing the trippier entries, did tend to blot out the vocals, though, and while the lyrics to something like “Horse Pills” aren’t exactly poetry, it would still be nice to actually hear them. Overall the night was kind of conflicting, both a welcome reminder of what made The Dandy Warhols big in the first place and a nostalgic demonstration of why they’re not as big anymore.
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