The Dandy Warhols
[#] The Capitol Years: 1995-2007 (2010)
Strangely executed, but the songs don't lie.
Reviewed January 5, 2026
You don't see a lot of greatest hits compilations in my review section because I generally don't collect them—the weird album cuts are my bread and butter. They're also weirdly anachronistic in the streaming age. At least albums generally stand as a solid piece. A compilation was made for the folks who wanted to hear "Bohemian Like You" without having to skip through "Mohammed" and "Sleep" to get there, and now YouTube is even more convenient than that. The Capitol Years: 1995-2007 is a confusing (for one thing, the Dandys' Capitol years actually start in 1997) collection held together by its top-shelf songs, proving the Dandys' approach to pulling stirring tunes out of rumbling sonics is no bullshit.
Despite the surface-level differences in "Good Morning"'s somnolent shoegaze, "Godless"' rootsy trumpets, and the scampering synths of "Plan A", these songs sit really nicely next to each other because they all come from the same sonic blueprint—big melodies, grubby fuzz, and a disappointed sneer. The mastering is where things start to get weird. I'd grudgingly expect a greatest hits to be blown out to shit, but there's actually a variety of mix differences and altered vocals here that range from "neat" to "pointlessly schizophrenic" (half the Monkey House tracks are taken from a noticeably alternate mix, for example). Consider it something for everyone, I guess: huge tunes for the casuals and a game of spot-the-difference for the dyed-in-the-Dandy.
| Essential: | "Every Day Should Be a Holiday", "Get Off", "Holding Me Up" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "The Last High" |
| Non-Essential: | "This is the Tide" |
| Rating: |  |
[#] The Dandy Warhols Are Sound (2009)
Of the structural variety, that is.
Reviewed January 26, 2026
The second most controversial Dandy Warhols release behind The Black Album, Are Sound is actually the original mix of 2003's Welcome to the Monkey House. Story goes, originally produced by Alicia Keys and Roots producer Russell Elevado, Capitol saw the album uncommercial and brought in Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes to pump the thing full of ketamine. Live drums were augmented with booming drum machines. Harmonies and crowd vocals were added. Whole hooks were grafted onto songs. Courtney Taylor-Taylor would say that it worked because he picked the right people to remix it, but the experience was enough of a bummer that Monkey House would become his least favorite of his band's work.
Debates have been had as to which album is truly better, but in truth, they're built for different purposes and both succeed where the other doesn't. Monkey House was an intentionally over-the-top lopsided synthpop rave burnout, while Are Sound's cleaner, more precise profile (free of mastering brickwalling, surprisingly) and better balanced, segueing tracklist lets the deeper cuts ("I Am Sound", "Burned", "Heavenly") breathe, sprawl, and feel much less forced. As a result, it plays better as a whole, though the singles (especially "We Used to Be Friends", now a weedly Gary Numan pastiche) tend to sound unfinished as a result. Monkey House for individual cuts, Are Sound for the whole trip.
| Essential: | "Burned", "The Last High", "I Am Sound" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Plan A" |
| Non-Essential: | "We Used to Be Friends" |
| Rating: |  |
| Further listening: | Download from The Dandy Warhols' Bandcamp |
[#] Come On Feel The Dandy Warhols (2003)
Entirely too scattershot for what riches it goes for nowadays.
Reviewed January 19, 2026
Collecting every single Dandy Warhols b-side is kind of a gigantic fucking ballache. These guys scattered covers, remixes, and outtakes to the wind across multiple versions of the same single, either speaking to their trademark uncompromising self-indulgence or a realization that the material just isn't that good. Come On Feel The Dandy Warhols is a stab at collecting, well, some of it, and a very pricey, out-of-print, and incomplete stab at that. I paid $70 for my Black Album/Come On Feel set, and I still don't have everything through it. You could get the original singles of the best tracks here, with shipping, for less than half that.
Covers make up about half the set, and they vary badly in quality. The Dandys turning CSNY's "Ohio" into a fittingly tar black acoustic drone about state murder or imbuing the Brian Jonestown Massacre's "Stars" with blustery, chilly sadness is pretty kino, but a lot of the rest fail to start. As succulent as a Slabtown horn orgy for "Hells Bells" is, Courtney has this habit of turning Brian Johnson's triumphant howl or Debbie Harry's seductive croon to flat, narcotic mumbling. Others still, like "The Jean Genie", are audibly spur of the moment. Not even a boomy, muscular remix of "Last Junkie on Earth" or an irresistably bouncy pop throwaway named "Retarded" can save your album at that point.
| Essential: | "Retarded", "Head", "Ohio" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Call Me" |
| Non-Essential: | "The Jean Genie" |
| Rating: |  |
[#] Welcome to the Monkey House (2003)
Smart people making stupid music strikes again.
Reviewed January 26, 2026
"Courtney, why do you always have to be the first at doing everything? It is so much more profitable to be the second." David Bowie reportedly said this to front Dandy Taylor-Taylor, and maybe that tracks. A year after Thirteen Tales, everyone in rock started copying the Rolling Stones. Two years after Monkey House, who's rewriting radio playlists but the Killers? It seems as big a detour as Thirteen Tales' country-rock leanings, big synthpop beats, rumbling synthbasses, and falsettos aplenty—that two members of Duran Duran were involved tells you all you need to know about its sound—but the Dandys are never so simple, even when they sound dumb.
More than most Dandys records, Monkey House embraces stupidity. Guess the hooks to the following tracks: "I Am a Scientist". "I Am Over It". "We Used to Be Friends" (trick question, that's only half the hook). "Plan A" always felt jaunty and medieval to me, as Taylor and his gang of imps get way out of their skulls repeating that "all of us sing about it" maybe 200 times. What's it? Not sure. With so much obvious bait on their hooks, it does make the trademark reflective trip-out songs at the end feel emptier, and critics at the time certainly couldn't tell if it was a joke at their expense and flambé'd the fuck out of the album. I think that's unfair. Glowsticks are no less fun just because you gotta throw them out eventually.
| Essential: | "Plan A", "I Am Over It", "The Last High" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "The Dope (Wonderful You)" |
| Non-Essential: | "Heavenly" |
| Rating: | |
[#] Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000)
Tales from Slabtown.
Reviewed January 19, 2026
Generally considered the Dandys' best album, Thirteen Tales is on the surface a sharp detour into rootsy Americana. Those of us more experienced know that's not quite true—they've been noodly cowboys since "Just Try", and the songs alternate wandering ballads and snotty Stonesian groove-ups like virtually every other record they've made. Still, the e-bows and trumpets that carry the achy opener "Godless" on the breeze signal a conscious shift in sound, a solid piece built to be, in their words, "the last classic rock album" in defiance of the nu-rock butt metal excesses of its time (though "Shakin'" still throws in some cheeky record scratches, because it was 2000).
Most of Thirteen Tales' best moments float around the middle of the record. "Horse Pills" and "Bohemian Like You" are as quintessentially Dandy, catchy image-conscious riffmongering, while the hugest tune here, "Get Off", is the post-nut clarity after the high noon orgy. "Godless" and "Sleep" show their drifty poignant emotional side only enhanced by the twang. These tracks work the best—when the group lean into the country LARP a la "Country Leaver", they just sound awkward and goofy (were the barn animal noises really necessary?). I don't quite agree with the assessment this is their best, but it's certainly the one with the greatest density of great singalongs, and that's just as well.
| Essential: | "Godless", "Get Off", "Sleep" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Cool Scene" |
| Non-Essential: | "Country Leaver" |
| Rating: | |
[#] ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down (1997)
Melodically sweet, sonically dense, perfectly balanced.
Reviewed January 12, 2026
Shimmery, glistening, and all warm and fuzzy, ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down might as well be a sonic Christmas tree—apt, given all the gifts the Dandys come bearing on it. What might be the band's brightest moment, a perfectly-paced mix of snowy drones and strutting garage rock, this is a huge leap forwards from both Dandys Rule OK and its attempted followup. OK might've seen them bury a huge tune like "Boys Better" or "Cool as Kim Deal" in fuzz or "la la la" out a great vocal melody, but here, their pop songs leap out of the speakers, and the lyrics are more cutting and introspective to boot.
It's easy to get caught in Courtney Taylor's smirking self-awareness when he sings about how he'd rather be cool than smart, or how heroin isn't even fuckin' cool anymore, but deeper analysis of Come Down reveals just as much vulnerability. "Be-In" borrows a jangly riff from a Black Album interlude and uses it to soundtrack isolation. "Whipping Tree", over an icy, distant guitar, is all about being in deep, perhaps futilely, and you don't need to listen very close to catch the hyperventilation and screaming fits on the smouldering "I Love You". About the only thing you can charge these smartasses with is not knowing how to end their album—but when the party's this good, why would you want to?
| Essential: | "Be-In", "I Love You", "Every Day Should Be a Holiday" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Boys Better" |
| Non-Essential: | "Pete International Airport" |
| Rating: |  |
| Further listening: | "First Draft: ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down" on Letters From Somnolescent |
[#] The Black Album (1996)
For those who can hold their liquor.
Reviewed January 12, 2026
The sound of the Dandys looking to get some dirt on their already scuzzy garage-gaze, through its initial unrelease, leaking, band distaste for the leak, and eventual official release about three or four times over now, The Black Album has had more warped afterlives than any other record in their catalog. Trumpets that somehow feed back like guitars, vocals buried in effects, and a middle section given way to swishing, wavering starfields of synths, this is through-and-through the sound of overindulgence—and it's kinda awesome, if you're the right kind of listener. By no means better than its poppier, shinier remake, but a thrilling grower in its own right.
The Black Album makes more sense if you look at it as a continuation of their debut rather than compare it to ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down. The grubby sweet guitars and lazy, hushed vocals of a "Not Your Bottle" or "Genius" are all over this thing, and "Crack Cocaine Rager" (how's that for a fruit basket to your new label?) struts like a lower-fidelity "Grunge Betty" or "T.V. Theme Song". If the poppy, narcotic tang of "Ride" is more your thing, look no closer than "Arpeggio Adaggio" or the original version of "Good Morning". This is a record for the patient, those who don't mind an occasionally grating horn in their ear, and the way they turn "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" into a crackling, nine-minute psych-rock storm enough to capsize your stereo is maybe the perfect microcosm of the entire play here.
(In more recent times, I've procured a copy of the leaked version of The Black Album, featuring a few tracks cut from the official CD release I reviewed here. Of the cut tracks, "Traci Lords" is the gem, a screeching, melodic bruiser, stacked with reversed guitars and wordless singing that fall to bits in its final moments. Conversely, "Alien" attempts throwback garage rock but is mostly atonal and unfinished, and "You Get Hi" sure has those words in it. The two better of these three have since been released on The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald EP, itself a cure for the relevant track being missing from The Black Album's digital reissue. Save for crossfades and the aforementioned cuts, the release version is identical in mix and sequencing to the leaked version.)
| Essential: | "Arpeggio Adaggio", "Good Morning", "The Wreck" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Crack Cocaine Rager" |
| Non-Essential: | "Minnesoter" |
| Rating: | |
| Further listening: | "First Draft: ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down" on Letters From Somnolescent |
[#] Dandys Rule OK (1995)
A massive concussion of rock and roll.
Reviewed January 5, 2026
The Portland-based Dandy Warhols have always occupied a challenging space in the rock continuum. It's not so much for their on-paper-simple-to-understand sozzled slurry of jubilant power pop, shoegaze sonics with just a hint of sitar, varying electropop flavoring, vulnerable acoustic introspection and a deep, music nerd working knowledge and catalog of covers of everyone from Blondie to Gordon Lightfoot to AC/DC to CSNY. It's more so their uncompromising flights of fancy, experimental to the pop crowd and what the hipster crowd felt was a hipster joke they weren't invited in on.
Never mind that. Whether the Dandys butter your muffin or not, their debut is undeniably all theirs. It's not often a group hits on all their career's sonic hallmarks right at the start, but Dandys Rule OK does it. You get the rollicking pop rock in their TV theme song transitioning into a handful of artist pastiches (ranging from the fuzz-toned "Ride" being worthy of any drive playlist to "Lou Weed" being worthy of, I dunno, a walk on the mild side?), folky acoustic navelgazing, and an over sixteen minute "Sister Ray" homage to cap things off. Perhaps the most quintessential Dandys album, start here to see if these guys do it for you like they do it for me.
| Essential: | "Ride", "Best Friend", "Genius" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Nothin' to Do" |
| Non-Essential: | "(Tony, This Song is Called) Lou Weed" |
| Rating: | |