Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
The long hiatus that led to the Dandy Warhols' masterful third album,Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, promoted leaps-and-bounds growth in this already excellent band's music. Layers, layers, and more layers of guitars coexist here with trippy soundscapes, doot-doo-doo choruses, and even an eyebrow-cocked nod to hip-hop ("Yo, bitch," frontman Courtney Taylor mutters, sounding likeLou Reedreading anIce Cubelyric sheet). By turns galloping, propulsive, hushed, and majestic, this is music that openly steals--from theStones,Kinks, andCars, among others--while fusing its sources into a unique whole of its own. Taylor lives up to the wide-screen promise of the disc's title, offering a series of what Game Theory once called "pointed accounts of people you know." The characters here brag about how they "got a beautiful new Asian girlfriend" ("Solid"), live the bicoastal high life in "itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny ridin'-up-your-butt bikini[s]" ("Horse Pills"), seek reassurance that an affair is "just a casual, casual, easy thing" ("Bohemian Like You"), and offer advice in the middle of a breakup argument: "Hey, man, turn that shit off." Seedily glamorous and replete with the best vocal asides since Jarvis Cocker let it bleed all over Pulp'sDifferent Class,Thirteen Taleswill convince you that rock is alive--and that you should still care.--Rickey Wright