Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The Dandy Warhols
Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
(Capitol, 2000)
Can you still like an album when the band have become the worthless epitome of indulgent art-posturing? Well, can you?
Much as we’d like to think we’re above such matters, notions of cool, credibility, and up-to-the-minute hipstery play a key role in MOJO’s Disc Of The Day. After all, if we’re going out on the bow of the MOJO webship to proclaim our love of an album then we sure as hell want to make sure it's something ultra hep even if not always very good. As a result, we’ve so far overlooked every single Beatles album, such Stones classics as Between The Buttons and Exile On Main Street while the only Dylan album we’ve tackled so far is Self Portrait. Hmm… Also problematic is the good album by the stoopid, square or, like, totally finished band. Who wants to go up against the behemoth that is the MOJO Message Board and proclaim their love for, say, Slowdive’s Souvlaki, Hole’s Celebrity Skin or The Dandy Warhols’ Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. Oh, all right then! For a band with so few original ideas, who’d already spent three years passing off Kinks riffs and Velvet Underground atmospherics as their own pop nous and distracting us with nudity, TTFUB was, at least audacious in its thievery. Opening track Godless melds the intro drone of Viginia Plain with the 12-string Chiffons guitar riff of George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord and then kinda admits that it has no further ideas, settling down into a hypnotic trance of barefaced pilfering. This drones on for two further songs of brass-led headswim psych that suggests early Ride backed by Blood Sweat And Tears (what?!). With tracks like Shakin’ it all gets a bit meta. Is this The Dandys doing Wire doing Addicted To Love or, more likely, the band taunting Elastica for their own larceny by comparing them to Robert Palmer? Yes, it’s also got that Nokia ad track on it but at its best TTFUB is like seeing a bunch of Portland drug fiends living it up on wasteground with the belongings of others, flipping them the finger and carrying it off with rude style.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 10/12/2008
Further Listening
Hole – Celebrity Skin (Geffen, 1998)
Slowdive – Souvlaki (Creation, 1993)
Brian Jonestown Massacre – Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request (Tangible, 1996)
Previous Disc of the day
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-
Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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-
Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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'Well I must have a door in the back of my......
...back 'a my head"
Yes, they ripped off every cool bohemian band that achieved 'legendary' status, but I prefer to think that the Dandies were merely wearing their heart on their sleeves, paying homage to their inspirations. "13 Tales From Urban Bohemia" captures a semi-history of exactly that ('Urban Bohemia', that is), with the Beatles and the Stones groovage and riffage melding in a super-cool way alongside Velvets and even late 70's, early 80's beatnik new-wave (hey Elastica...didn't you guys do that, too?)
I personally think the Dandy Warhols made all of this pretty obvious, so I appreciate the fact that Ross Bennett took the time to acknowledge this sprawling, stoney rock and roll hodgepodge to re-ignite the credit it deserves.
I bet this one lands in the 'albums of the decade' lists over the next year or so. Hell, I'd put it in my personal top ten or twenty. And "Solid" contains some of my all-time favourite lyrics (see above).
Fantastic stuff.
Posted by Matt Edwards at 2:38 PM GMT 10/12/2008 Report Abuse
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