The Dandy Warhols At the 9:30 Club
At the 9:30 club on Friday night, the Dandy Warhols were the epitome of cocky rock-star swagger. Throughout the evening the Portland dream-pop quartet's frontman, Courtney Taylor-Taylor, kept his lips fixed in a smirking Mick Jagger pucker. Next to him, keyboardist and singer Zia McCabe swayed the night away with a confident sensuality, often with her eyes closed and a maraca or tambourine swinging languidly in her hand. Asking at one point for a sound system adjustment, Taylor-Taylor explained, "I can't hear anything except the drums and me. Which is not bad. I'm pretty good!" All this self-assurance led to a wildly uneven show, a nearly three-hour epic that was at turns mesmerizing and soporific, intoxicating and irritating. At their best, the Dandy Warhols created a decadent, blissed-out sound built around surging bass lines, swirling guitars and Taylor-Taylor's ever-sultry vocals. Several songs like "Be In," "Godless," "Solid" and their sassy new single, "We Used to Be Friends," hit this mark solidly.
At other times the Dandys seemed to confuse self-assurance with self-indulgence. Several tunes dragged on endlessly, detouring into tedious ambient jams of floating guitars and trippy electronic effects. These stretches apparently strove for hypnosis, but mainly achieved boredom. (During one such lull, a fan wondered if guitarist Pete Holmstrom, mysteriously fiddling with an onstage computer, was secretly checking his e-mail.) One suspects the blame for this lack of discipline lies with Taylor-Taylor, who rambled variously about the deaths of Johnny Cash and John Ritter, and at one point sang a languid version of Duran Duran's "Rio," accompanied by just his guitar. Undisciplined indulgences like these were sometimes charming. But about 30 minutes less of them would have been a lot dandier.
