What is the Odditorium? It’s a place where things move left when you think they’ll go right. Just inverted as hell. Or -- to be literal -- it’s the title (sorta) of the new album by the Dandy Warhols, and also the name of the spot in their Portland, Oregon hometown where they lived it. So yes, the Odditorium is a building located right by the Fremont Bridge in Northwest
Portland that’s got a stage and a recording studio and lots of guitars and instruments and couches and ashtrays and maps and charts and all the other essentials that a fulltime rock and roll band should have at their disposal. As a meeting ground for the Dandys and their extended circle of friends, lots of things have happened there (we can’t tell you about most of them), but arguably the most important thing that went down there in the last year or so was the recording of the band’s fifth record, Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars, which will be released on September 13th. Before we get into where they are now, let’s discuss where they’ve been. The Dandys formed in Portland in 1994, releasing Dandy Warhols Rule Ok? on the indie Tim/Kerr Records in 1995. Their next three albums for Capitol, The Dandy Warhols Come Down
(1997), Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000) and Welcome To The Monkey House (2003) put the band on the charts, on TV and in the sweet, sweet limelight with international hits like “Not If You Were The Last Junkie on Earth” and “Bohemian Like You.” In 2003, the band was chosen by David Bowie to be the supporting act on his Reality Tour and most recently, the band was featured alongside the Brian Jonestown Massacre in indie documentary film Dig!, winner of the Grand Jury Best Documentary prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Where they’ve been makes for good copy for sure, but where they’re going now with Odditorium Or Warlords From Mars is really interesting. Odditorium finds the Dandys bringing it all back home, but in a different way. Coproducers Courtney Taylor-Taylor and longtime band collaborator Gregg Williams have captured and augmented the sound of the Dandys doing what they do best -- making super-seductive music for your head and your hips. Born of long sessions that found the band experimenting freely with new instrumentation and adding new flavors to their trademark mix of seamless rock hooks, turned-on drone, deep psychedelia and a big shot of the country blues, Odditorium is an expansive rock and roll album that could only come from the minds (and home) of the Dandys. How exactly the band was able to cover so much new musical ground and sound so familiar is the Dandys’ little secret, but you could say that the group being fully in their element while crafting this record for you had something to do with it. And while the Odditorium is certainly a product of the Dandys’ own rarified world, they’re thankfully not the types to keep a good a thing all to themselves. They’d like to have everyone get in on the fun. You can think of the Odditorium as a physical place that produced an album of the same name (sorta), or as a sonic portal straight to the Dandy Warhols circa now. It’s totally up to you. As for the whole Warlords Of Mars thing, we seriously have no idea about that.

THE DANDY WARHOLS ARE:
Courtney Taylor-Taylor – vocals, guitars, keyboards, percussion
Peter Holmstrom – guitars, bells
Zia McCabe – keyboards, bass, percussion, harmonica, vocals
Brent DeBoer – drums, bass, vocals