Dandy Warhols Are Sound

In the spring of 2003, The Dandy Warhols released Welcome To The Monkey House, their fourth full-length. The album, co-produced by Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes, turned out a couple of cult favorites ("We Used To Be Friends," "I Am A Scientist"), and settled into the Billboard 200. Fans latched on to the tongue-in-cheek lyrics they'd come to expect from Courtney Taylor-Taylor, and commended the band for expanding their sound into a mix of organic and electro elements that today, over six years after the record was released, seems particularly forward-thinking and relevant. Although The Dandy Warhols weren't unhappy with Monkey House's final result, they weren't entirely pleased, either. The band had been pressing to release a version mixed by Russell Elavedo, a GRAMMY-award winning soul mixing engineer whose credits include D'Angelo's Brown Sugar, The Roots' The Roots Come Alive, Common's Like Water For Chocolate, and Alicia Keys' Songs In A Minor, among others. Instead, it was shelved and the mix the label had arranged was put out under the title Welcome To The Monkey House (which Taylor-Taylor came up with upon learning of the affairs). Now, in 2009, comfortably owners of the label, Beat The World Records, the Warhols are finally able to release the album equivalent of the "Director's Cut" of Welcome To The Monkey House, aptly titled The Dandy Warhols ARE Sound.