Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 12/09/05
Label: Parlophone

Opening with a comical voiceover-style track that falsely implies a giddy new direction for the over-serious Dandy Warhols, "Odditorium" is an aptly-named collection that will have even foul-weather fans scratching their heads as to where the pop has gone.

Live, the Dandys have always erred on the side of the prog jam but with albums they've tended to reign it in with a view to a good three or four solid radio-friendly cuts. By contrast, after the spoken opener, "Odditorium" delivers one nine-minute track ("Love Is The New Feel Awful") and another seven-minute song ("Easy" - ha!) of overlong indulgent nonsense guaranteed to have "Bohemian Like You" buyers running back to Blunt's bedlam before they've even ended.

"All The Money" is a catchy, Stones-y retread of former glories, "The New Country" is a brief Ronseal-esque hayseed stomp and "Holding Me Up" is more regurgitated back catalogue stretched to another seemingly infinite seven minutes. The 55-second "Did You Make A Song With Otis?" is just recorded-while-pissed pish, before "Everyone Is Totally Insane" does an '80s drone that seems far longer than its three-and-a-half minutes.

The single "Smoke It" and "Down Like Disco" are by-numbers stuff that wouldn't have made it onto either "Monkeyhouse" or the superior "Urban Bohemia", penultimate track "There Is Only This Time" is fleetingly interesting, like a bluesy psalm, but ultimately goes nowhere and closer "A Loan Tonight" is 11 dullsville minutes of electro onanism.

Anyone who's fan enough to have watched the Dandy Warhols documentary "Dig!" will know that their former friends The Brian Jonestown Massacre were infamous for churning out albums in the space of a week with little regard for quality control. Here, it sounds as if Courtney & co have tried the same trick, with similarly so-so results. Buy this, and indulge their indulgence, and you'll simply never get another good album out of them ever again.

    by Emma Morgan