The Dandy Warhols
Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars (Deltasonic)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Amplifier, September-October 2005

After an amusing fake history of the Dandy Warhols by A&E personality Bill Kurtis, Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars gets off to an amazing start with the unsettling “Love Is The New Feel Awful,” which is like “Baker Street” suffused with the dread of “Gimme Shelter.” But then, halfway through the song, entropy sets in and the instruments begin to lose definition, leaving an undifferentiated wash of noise. That sense of the band riding their songs until they grind to a halt suffuses Odditorium like an opium haze. Not everything collapses: “All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey” slaps an Exile On Main Street horn line onto a Muswell Hillbillies vocal, while “Holding Me Up” and “Down Like Disco” sound like they could be muscular homages to Dig!-mates and frenemies the Brian Jonestown Massacre. But the Dandy Warhols mostly lose themselves in the spirit of experimentation, without concern for the practical applications of their labwork.

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