keepers 5
keeper avg .357
The Dandys second album is a sampling of pop and drawn-out 3 or 4-chord jams - opener "Be-In" being one of the former. The average song on the album sounds like a professionalized Brian Jonestown Massacre (reference the film "Dig"), a band who has also made a career of combining the aforementioned styles. The Dandys' edges are smoother, but unfortunately the spontaneity and layers of jangle that BJM's simple production provide are squeezed out by heavy studio distortion and major label production. What's worse is that with the exception of the reasonably rocking "Boys Better"**** most of the first half of the album sputters along with lame jokes ("Minnesoter") and monotonous turds ("I Love You") before the first sign of life appears in the form of "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth"**** (the "heroin is so passe" song), silly but catchy. "Every Day Should Be A Holiday"**** is a nice bit of double-time Brit-pop, a likely influence for any fan of BJM. After these two strong tracks, "Good Morning" (with a completely unnecessary one and a half minutes of guitar intro) has Courtney Taylor attempting an annoying impression of a crooning Iggy Pop, while "Whipping Tree" and "Green" are forgettable ballads. Providing a much-needed late album rally, "Cool As Kim Deal"**** is another Nuggets-garage-y rocker with a great indie rock lover's reference point, and "Hard On For Jesus"****, while even more derivative of BJM than most rocks with a twin attack of noisy guitar and harmony. After this, 6 minutes of atmospheric "Pete International Airport" is unnecessary, as is almost 9-minutes of instrumental "The Creep Out", however cool-sounding. It's an album with some good tracks, but with far too much monotonous jamming in 67-minutes, calling the album inconsistent would be too kind.
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