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This evening of retro rock began with a depressingly enthusiastic band called Supporting Act (or something hilarious like that) giving a tight but uninspired performance. Things picked up considerably when The Dandy Warhols, looking withered at the end of their North American tour, shambled on stage to show Vancouver that, for this type of music to work nowadays, it as to be all about inspiration. Umberto Eco once argued that Casablanca is a classic because the script is saturated with stereotypes and cliches to the point that it becomes sublime. The same logic can certainly be applied to the Dandys. With nothing original to add to their irreverent but loving pastiches they perfect and elevate the art of shameless rip off. Guitarist Peter Holmstrom managed to epitomise this approach by wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt while playing Stones riffs on a guitar with a Stones sticker attached to it. This sort of tongue-in-cheek tribute to rock history is the kind of thing that gets UK critics salivating, which explains why Portland's finest are far more popular in Britain than on their own continent. Where other bands with a similar approach (say Saint Ettiene) often sound rather detached, the Dandys always counterpoint their arch posing with bursts of "authentic" emotion and energy, which, in this context, take on seismic proportions. So, to an extent, they mean it maaan. Indeed, judging by their dishevelled onstage glamour at the Starfish, the new album title -13 Tales from Urban Bohemia - isn't all that ironic. These PoMo bohos really look they live it, and make a convincingly psychedelic racket to match. As well as the general shambolic noise, their loud'n'long show featured: a trumpet-slinging additional Dandy in a 10-gallon hat; an impromptu version of Kristin Hersh's "Your Ghost"; several hundred guitar pedals. What more could
you ask for from this kind of band? Second on the Bill may have been
tighter but it was the Dandies slack approach to retro rock that made
this show so entertaining. |
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