(Beat The World/Inertia)

Off the planet but still fine and dandy

Setting up their own label to go it alone, The Dandies have stepped out of the capsule, taking us further into the twilight zone with this eighth album. With frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor producing, they’ve built on the addled but addictive swirl of their last album three years ago to come up with a rambling, spiralling set of spacey, hazy, cyclic neo-psychedelic songs, complete with oddball titles like Musee D’Nougat and Wasp In The Lotus. In that sense, there’s no immediate hit here. But it’s not long before I’m hooked again, even if it seems a little messed-up to begin with. I mean, Talking Heads-style funky guitar with a Mick Jagger-like spoken word thing in Welcome To The Third World, a glam rock strum in Talk Radio, the grumbly psychobilly of The Ballad Of The Last Of The Outlaw Truckers, the curiously clanging beats of Mis Amigos, the Rolling Stone(d) stagger of Valerie Yum? But, coated with a smoky atmosphere and dense drones (not to mention a couple of odd guests in ex-Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler and Tom Petty sideman Mike Campbell), it somehow kicks in and lingers. Don’t you wish you were bohemian like them?

****

BILL HOLDSWORTH

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