The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

The Dandy Warhols

[#] The Dandy Warhols Are Sound (2009)

Of the structural variety, that is.

Reviewed January 26, 2026

The second most controversial Dandy Warhols release behind The Black Album, Are Sound is actually the original mix of 2003's Welcome to the Monkey House. Story goes, originally produced by Alicia Keys and Roots producer Russell Elevado, Capitol saw the album uncommercial and brought in Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes to pump the thing full of ketamine. Live drums were augmented with booming drum machines. Harmonies and crowd vocals were added. Whole hooks were grafted onto songs. Courtney Taylor-Taylor would say that it worked because he picked the right people to remix it, but the experience was enough of a bummer that Monkey House would become his least favorite of his band's work.

Debates have been had as to which album is truly better, but in truth, they're built for different purposes and both succeed where the other doesn't. Monkey House was an intentionally over-the-top lopsided synthpop rave burnout, while Are Sound's cleaner, more precise profile (free of mastering brickwalling, surprisingly) and better balanced, segueing tracklist lets the deeper cuts ("I Am Sound", "Burned", "Heavenly") breathe, sprawl, and feel much less forced. As a result, it plays better as a whole, though the singles (especially "We Used to Be Friends", now a weedly Gary Numan pastiche) tend to sound unfinished as a result. Monkey House for individual cuts, Are Sound for the whole trip.

Essential:	"Burned", "The Last High", "I Am Sound"
Quintessential:	"Plan A"
Non-Essential:	"We Used to Be Friends"
Rating:
Further listening:	Download from The Dandy Warhols' Bandcamp