Dandy Warhols
(Beat the World Records)
Six years ago, the Dandy Warhols got their '80s on with co-producer Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran on Welcome to the Monkey House. But that's the album as the label wanted you to hear it, having shelved the mix the Warhols liked by soul man Russell Elavedo, whose greatest hits include D'Angelo's Brown Sugar, The Roots Come Alive and Common's Like Water for Chocolate. Now that they've launched their own label, the Warhols have welcomed you back to the Monkey House to hear those great lost Elavedo mixes.
And it sounds more like Duran Duran than Common, that's for sure. It also sounds a lot like Welcome to the Monkey House, a fairly unavoidable result of releasing the same album twice. But there are certain fundamental differences, starting with "Burned," an atmospheric seven-minute epic that closed the other album but eases you into this one in a far more nuanced space-rock mix. "Plan A" exposes the original "Plan A" as the "Plan B" it always was while other tracks, like "Scientist," stay truer to the other mix. But even there, the less-is-more approach to mixing makes it feel less like an art-rocker gunning for airplay on Modern Rock radio. And that can only be a good thing. As to whether anybody really needs a slightly better version of a Dandy Warhols album (with one truly inessential "new track), you could more than likely trade the slightly weaker version in at any of your better indie record store.
Standout tracks: "Burned," "Plan A" A. WATT
