It might sound like an insufferable Dr Bob-ism, but in a way Courtney’s new hairdo is indicative of the Dandy’s new direction, the kind of musical paradigm shift that inevitably elicits chin-stroking rockspeak like ‘rewards repeated listenings’ or ‘in a daring move…’
The album, Welcome To The Monkey House, covers all bases from Thomas Dolby-esque monotony-rap [‘Scientist’], to dreamy Apollo soundscapes [‘Insincere Because’], to New Wave synth-laden shout-along anthems [first single ‘We Used To Be Friends’]. For a band with such a well-established – and well-loved – sound and style, how will the fans greet the new album? Holmstrom is matter-of-fact. “I’m guessing that the overall reaction will probably be unhappy at first, a little disappointed because they don’t hear all their favourite sounds. But then, if they listen to it like three or four times they’ll realise that they’re all Dandy Warhols songs – very obviously Dandy Warhols songs - and that they’ll come to love it. Some of the songs, I think, are actually better [than the ‘old’ sound]: we’ve progressed, they’re better”.

In the wake of the success of 2000’s mega-hit Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, the band took their time developing the follow-up, in typical Dandys style. When quizzed as to why the band likes to have such long breaks between releases, Holmstrom is slightly embarrassed. “Um… that’s how long it takes us to make a record!”, he laughs wheezily. “It usually takes us less time to record, just a long time to find out what we actually want to do with it”.
Do they see it as necessary downtime to let the songs and sound evolve naturally? “I don’t know if it’s necessary. Because we tend to know what we want, but there’s just a lot of decisions to make. The problem is actually finding the right people to work with. It’s usually, like, a spur of the moment ‘I wanna work with that person!’ thing, and then they’re not available, so then you scrounge around until you find somebody who is right, and who is available. I think the kind of problem with the dream list is that it’s the obvious list, the most obvious choices. And it would be pointless to work with them anyway; it would be going after a sound that had already happened. We try and get a sound that hasn’t happened yet, and so working with somebody who’s completely different is a better idea”.

One of the beguiling things about a Dandy Warhols record is the way that all the songs are separate entities, with the whole kept coherent by a narrative theme that ropes together the sum of its parts. Is this a conscious approach to recording? “Oh, you have to treat every song as a separate thing. If you decided on one way to treat your album, then some songs would suffer because they wouldn’t have gone as far as they needed to go, than if they had gone in a different direction to the rest of the album”. Holmstrom is particularly aware of the dangers of styling when listening to a lot of the New Rock saviours. “There are definitely bands where I think they find a guitar sound that works for one song, and they use it on the whole damn record. It’s silly – I mean, yeah, it might be a great guitar sound, but it’s not gonna be great every single time. Let it go – f you do it too many times”, he sighs, “it ain’t that great anymore”.

The band has in a sense lived in the shadow of defining singles such as ‘Bohemian Like You’ and ‘…Last Junkie On Earth’, and the duality of wanting to be pleased about their success but also having to live up to it in the future irritates the otherwise placid Holmstrom. “It’s frustrating, because I don’t necessarily think those are our best songs. They’re like one thing that we do that’s good, but we’re multifaceted, and we’ve got many different things that I enjoy more. You know, if you try and do it again, then you’re not going to… you can’t try. It’s just gotta happen”.

One thing that ‘just happened’ was ex-Duran Duran member Nick Rhodes coming on board as co-producer for the album, a role that grew out of an initial guest appearance. “We started talking, and came up with the idea of him doing keyboards on one of our songs, and when we got it back it was amazing so we decided to do more. And eventually he did enough to be worth [the title of] co-producer, when you put that amount of effort and talent into it”.

So does this mean that The Dandys will ditch the trademark badged-denim and retro-t-shirts in favour of white suit jackets with the sleeves pushed up, Duran-stylee? Holmstrom issues a resounding “Nuh." But just how important is style - or a sense of it – to a band like the Dandy Warhols? “It’s something that is important to us, but we’re kinda too lazy to take anything to the full extent of where it could go – so we never look like we’re trying too hard”.

But it’s the fact that secretly they care that makes their coolness accessible. Because like the song title says, The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everything. Except white suit-jackets with the sleeves pushed up, okay? Okay.