Album: The Dandy Warhols <!-- none onestar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Odditorium or Warlords of Mars, PARLOPHONE

Having emerged the more commercially successful survivors of the feud chronicled in the documentary Dig, what streak of suicidal illogic can have prompted The Dandy Warhols to abandon their tried and tested career path and adopt the style of their chums/nemeses in that film, The Brian Jonestown Massacre? For that is, in effect, what they've done on Odditorium or Warlords of Mars. The album is clotted up with slab after slab of droning, addle-headed psychedelic jams which, in the case of "Love Is The New Feel Awful" and the closing "A Loan Tonight", trudge on for nine or 10 minutes apiece. Courtney Taylor-Taylor's vocals have been reduced, for the most part, to such enervated, anomic murmurs that it's all but impossible to discern whether this new direction is another sardonic pastiche - maybe an extension of the Dig rivalry? - or for real. The handful of tracks that don't follow this course - the cod-Americana hoe-down "New Country", the folk-rock strum "All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey", the "G.L.O.R.I.A."-groove gloss "Down Like Disco", and the Dylanesque sneer-rocker "Smoke It" - are hobbled by a tiresome irony that sabotages whatever impact they might have made.