Woah! Board up your windows, call the fire brigade and brace those ribs; the Circus is in town! But this isn't any old run of the mill animal-chasing and cannon-popping dipshit operation; this, my beautiful friends, is the DANDY WARHOLS ROCK N' ROLL ROADSHOW!!!

Roll up, roll, up, for the return of the repressed! Book your seats now for the all-American show of the year! Buy in haste and bring your grandparents; vow never to listen to anyone else for the rest of eternity as you

• GASP at the torrid alcohol and sex fuelled missives of model-schmoozing singer Courtney Taylor!
• STARE as the exotic keybordist Zia shows her battle scars (and more) to the world!
• SHRIEK at the drummer's hair!

Yes, my bemused and ever-so-slightly fearful friends, it's true; Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, in musical terms, is the anti-tripe. After the one-song medley that formed the greater part of Courtney and co's previous LP The Dandy Warhols Come Down (review), Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia comes as a hurricane-strength and impossibly cold breath of fresh air. Obviously, someone has told The Warhols that age old Chinese saying, heeded by wise musicians both small and large everywhere:

'A Man's band shall Diversify, or man's band shall become a crap one trick pony."

Advice well taken.

Even from the opening loser-rock of Godless, it's quickly apparent that we are now watching the all new adventures of The Dandy Warhols; just as slack, just as cool, but with a swag bag full of brand new tunes and ideas. The seamless link into the eastern flavoured Mohammed adds to the spectacle; five minutes of tired and wanting vocals with acoustic fingerpicking and brass sprucing up the mood, only for the sky to cave in and satan himself to appear in the form of the trembling and vocarious monster that is Neitzsche, once again linked as smooth as peach melba and featuring one of the Warhols most angry and couldn't give a fook riffs to date. Remember my friends, at this point we are only three tracks into the album.

Thankfully, this sort of diversity is to continue, as standout track Country Leaver out-Becks Mr.Hansen himself, leaving the original to continue with his faux-Prince B-sides whilst the Warhols capitalise on those great straw chewing, goo-spitting and beer-gulping nerdcult clap-alongs that made Beck so great in the first place. There's then the great slack Disco medley of Solid and Horse Pills, bringing back memories of the Warhols of old but without any of the frustratingly repetitive drumbeats.

Somewhat strangely, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia only threatens to disappoint in the anti-climax of single Get Off, the limp Cool Scene (which can be quite convincingly be compared to Blur's Coffee & TV but sadly being played backwards), and the Rolling Stones Brown Sugar riff-theft of next single Bohemian Like You. Any other doubts however are soon thrown through the window when the strangely hypnotic (and again Beck flavoured) slowing down of Big Indian steals the limelight, leaving closing track The Gospel, a somewhat bewildering combination of a homage to R.E.M's Star Me Kitten and rugby anthem Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, to bring this, the Warhols finest album, to a close.

The Dandy Warhols have produced great records in the past, but their flaw was their inane similarity from song A to songs, B, C, and D-thru-Z. But now, that problem is over, and The Dandy Warhols have come of age.

So roll up, buy your hotdogs and popcorn and squelch into the last beer-stained seat left, before the show sells out.

You're in for a good time.

9/10 Karl Cremin

Review - The Dandy Warhols - The Dandy Warhols Come Down

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