Loaded Album of the week
By Fred Spanner
The Dandy Warhols: Pin Ups ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This isn’t a shiny new studio album so much as the band rifling through their record collection and shouting, “Go on then, we’ll have a crack at that.” The result is a rag-tag set of covers from artists who clearly live rent-free in their heads. We’re talking everyone from The Beatles and Bob Dylan to punk icons like The Clash.
The point isn’t polish. The point is attitude.
Frontman Courtney Taylor‑Taylor sounds like he’s having the time of his life stomping through the songs that made him pick up a guitar in the first place. Their take on Kiss Off turns the original’s snark into a fuzzy garage-rock stomp, while Cherry Bomb gets the full Dandy treatment: distortion, Zia’s vocals, and the full-on ‘Dandy’ groove.
Even the classics get cheekily messed with. Blackbird floats along in a psychedelic haze rather than polite acoustic finger-picking, and their spin on The Cure’s Primary keeps the nervous pulse but drenches it in woozy guitar.
Because the tracks were recorded over years rather than one tidy session, the album’s a bit like a mixtape made after several late nights and questionable decisions, but it jumps around stylistically.
And that’s the charm.
At a time when plenty of rock records sound like they’ve been polished by a committee of producers and algorithms, Pin Ups feels gloriously human.
We could all use more of that.
Check out our interview with Courtney Taylor-Taylor.