5 out of 5

Label: Capitol

Produced by: The Dandy Warhols, Tony Lash

Somewhere between the amateur indulgences of their debut and the post-success indulgences of followup notable ‘Thirteen Tales’ – accepting that I dig both variations of these indulgences – lies the assured relative innocence of ‘Come Down,’ and hour plus of jamming that floats through all of the Warhols major musical influences without pausing for the smokey jam sessions that creep into most of their work – or at least taking advantage of bookending sequencing to keep that kind of stuff in a good place for the listening experience.

I think one of the most telling things about the talent of The Warhols is how clearly they wear their pop, psych, and shoegaze badges, and yet how you can always tell that it’s a Dandys song.  Plenty of groups play in these same fields, of course, but it’s easy to get some of them confused in a few notes, or when that one riff sounds just like the beginning of the song from which it was lovingly ripped.  But the Dandys have always been Dandys, and ‘Come Down’ has always been the album that has every song that gets stuck in my head by the Dandys.  I mean, sure, absolutely, ‘Tales’ and ‘Monkey House’ have immensely awesome singles, but a spin through ‘Come Down’ pushes those out of my sing-song memory in favor of ‘Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth,’ or ‘Cool as Kim Deal.’  There’s a bit less Taylor-Taylor on the disc, and a bit more Taylor; a bit less presentation.  ‘Come Down’ is accessible, willfully fun and jammy, flip-flopping song by song between rockers and swooners.  There isn’t a point where I don’t feel cool enough to be part of the gig (which, again, is accepting that their are other five star Warhols albums out there, and that the bluster that has developed along the way is just part of their almighty appeal).  And those big, bloated jam sessions, which the Dandys make cool but caaaan get in the way of your toe-tapping experience, have been pushed out to the beginning and end of the disc, building you up with the aptly named opener ‘Be-In’ and letting you down with, again, the aptly and wittily named ‘The Creep Out.’

Yeah, I guess the lyrics aren’t hitting any emotional depths, still, with Courtney’s hokey snark intact for Minnesoter and the humdrum frankness of the singles mentioned, but that’s not what it’s about, dude.  It’s just about confidence.  And ‘Come Down’ was the group absolutely hitting their stride, aware enough to ditch an album of material (The Black Album, later released) for a more commercial one that knows how to be commercial without sacrificing anything that would’ve brought you from the previous disc to this one, and yet still at the point where you can hear them playing this stuff in your garage.  Ah, the innocence of youth.  Or something.  And then five stars.