The Dandy Warhols are a great band and Earth To The Dandy Warhols is their sixth album. Starting out in Portland Oregan, in the late 90’s, the band have enjoyed considerable success; so much so that they now own a quarter city block of Portland known as "The Odditorium" where they’ve created a complex of film and music studios and a space to throw gigs, parties and events. The band shot to fame (pun intended) with Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth, containing the perfectly observed lyric, dissing all pretentious scenesters everywhere; “You never thought you'd get addicted, just be cooler in an obvious way. I could say, shouldn't you have got a couple piercings and decided maybe that you were gay?”  

Earth To The Dandy Warhols is an album where melodic pop sensibilities wrestle with feedback drenched indie rock drones, complete with heavily processed other worldly vocals. Kind a like a noughties soundtrack to a psychedelic 60’s party.  Opener The World The People Together (Come On) is a driving psych rock number with a heavily processed vocal buried in the mix. The songs are interspersed with snippets of crackling spaceship communication type dialogue so logically the next song is titled Mission Control. Followed by Welcome To The Third World, the beginning of which sounds a bit like The Clash’s Magnificent Seven, which is never a bad thing. Next is Wasp In The Lotus, more psych rock with dreamy phased vox and crunchy guitar feedback. And Then I Dreamt of Yes is a slower paced psych jam with a weirdly panned, telephoned voiced verse and harmonised chorus. Talk Radio bemoans “Too much talking on the radio” with a “nah na nah” harmonised refrain and spacey, chorused guitar and Love Song is an “alt folk indie rock” (new genre alert!) gem, complete with beautiful plucky mandolin. Now You Love Me is a classic bittersweet Dandy Warhols track with shredding guitar, sing-along chorus and ska-esque rhythm and is followed by my favourite track, Mis Amigos. Apparently the Dandys like to smoke weed and hang out with their friends. Who can argue with that. Fuck it, I’m gonna say it I really want to be friends with The Dandy Warhols. Impressively titled The Legend Of The Last Of The Outlaw Truckers AKA The Ballad Of Sheriff Shorty is part cowboy music and part trucker rock. Beast Of All Saints is a spacey ballad about love lost that transforms into a dubby sonic monster of a song, with pounding rhythms and even more harmonised spacey vocals.

The album ends with Valerie Yum, a genius title and any song that features a hook of singing “Yum Yum Yum” is ok with me.  Musee D'Nougat, a 14 minute - yes that’s right - 14 minute ode to nougat, everyone’s favourite chewy nut based sweet. The song begins with a Frenchman extolling the myriad virtues of nougat, backed with synthy drones, guitar feedback and swelling strings. As the song progresses you realise that you’re listening to the sound of nougat being made…did you know there are two basic types of nougat. White nougat is made with beaten egg whites and is soft, whereas brown nougat, called nougatine in French, is made with caramelized sugar and has a firmer, often crunchy texture. It reminded me of the aural insanity of Saint Etienne’s Wilson, from their incredible first album Foxbase Alpha, which if you’ve never heard is well worth tracking down.

In fact Earth To The Dandy Warhols whilst being very different sonically has the same sense of playful experimentation and musicality, and so it’s highly recommended.