Dandy Warhols decry gentrification of hometown of Portland

THEY lived there before it was cool, and Dandy Warhols aren’t liking what’s becoming of their hometown.

PORTLAND has a population problem. The alternative capital of the US is experiencing such an influx of out-of-town ­hipsters, it’s starting to smother the native wildlife. The ­Pacific Northwest city known for its coffee shops, tattooed, bike-riding eco-warrior types and Powell’s, the world’s largest bookstore, is becoming such a magnet for, well, everybody, that it’s starting to lose its edge.

The Dandy Warhols prefer their hometown the way it was.

The Dandy Warhols, of course, lived there before it was cool. They were part of a culture wave that made it cool. I first heard of Portland because of the Dandy Warhols. “Keep Portland weird” is the slogan you’ll see in the local souvenir shops, and it sums up the vibe of the Oregon city. There’s even a sketch comedy show devoted to it, ­Portlandia, which points a cheeky finger at some of the city’s more earnest cultural types.

Frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor still lives in the city, where he runs his studio, Odditorium, and soon to be wine bar, with the working title Old Portland. He’s witnessed the chaos first-hand. “We have some of the worst traffic in North America,” he moans. “It’s just not fun any more. It’s not groovy, it’s f--king insane. Intense overpopulation, an overcrowded small city, and it’s all kind of mall-shopper ­California type of people. It’s not tattooed, pierced ­groovies. It sucks. It’s not that great here. I’m bummed.”

Taylor-Taylor might sound like a grumpy old man, but he’s seen the city at its worst and best – often both at once.

“It was a burnt-out, declining population town. So the weirdos were really weird and it was anything goes … public nudity, shaving-cream-spewing rock events in tiny bars that popped up. It was so f--king cool,” he says of those ­halcyon days. “So gritty. So truly tired and worn down and dirty and just great. Half empty. Rainy and dark and cold, and weirdos upon weirdos huddled together in little places just to express themselves and trying to be part of something. It was a really wonderful place to form an identity. But who knows where that town is now? Pittsburgh? I don’t know. I feel like everywhere’s getting gentrified.”

This mood is reflected on the Dandy Warhols’ aptly named new album Distortland, which seems a darker ­record compared to the band’s cheerful canon. Over 20 years and nine studio albums they have been responsible for party favourites including Every Day Should Be a Holiday, Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth, Bohemian Like You and We Used to Be Friends. Few bands could fill a ­greatest hits record. The Dandys could fill one twice over.

“They all are dark to me,” the records’ architect contradicts. “Every one of them. I guess there’s some sort of ­sauciness (in our songs) that comes off as being happy, but it’s probably just the joy of being snotty. Being a bit flip.”

The Dandy Warhols are maintaining their poppy edge.

True to form, Distortland’s lead single, You Are Killing Me, sounds as poppy as ever, even if its lyrics reflect the low point of a relationship. Then there’s a song dedicated to the staple on every young person’s reading list, J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. It contains the lyric, “Don’t you know anything can get you down if you let it”, and the amelior­ating “I found heaven is a place on earth, look around”.

Despite Portland’s blossoming weirdness, back in high school, before he found his tribe, Taylor-Taylor felt he didn’t fit in, ducking bullies by turning to books. His formative reading list included Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. “Huge, coming-of-age, ­enlightenment mind-openers,” he says. “All the usual, very common for young intellectuals to find in college – really like, wow, holy s--t. Very smart and very visionary. On the Road, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance … ” He’s also a big fan of controversial author and philosopher Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead: “It’s one of the most important books ever written.”

It’s no secret that the books and records we listen to in our youth can have tremendous impact on shaping who we are. So what happens when you get older? What, I ask him, makes you go, “wow, holy s--t” now? “A really amazing perfectly aged bottle of French wine,” he says. That’s not surprising. His love of wine is well documented, but the next response is less so. “I have probably the greatest ­collection of music from the Renaissance of anyone else in Portland. I finally reduced it to one 150-year period where they invented what the Dandys do. Mostly chord composers. Like Guillaume de Machaut, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis and Tomás Luis de Victoria – there are these guys who are moving chords around and there’s no lead vocal. There’s no lead melody. The virtuoso is the ­composition. ’’

Whether it’s a bottle of wine and Renaissance music or sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, the Dandy Warhols confess, 20 years on, they still like to party and create. And that’s ­reflected in the album’s finale, The Grow Up Song. It’s the same feeling he might have felt at 25 or 49.

“When you were 25 and people stayed at a party too long and you were too drunk and people were annoying, that song was exactly how I felt then. I don’t think there’s a year of my life when I haven’t felt that. It’s not a midlife ­crisis song. It’s a dear god, am I still doing this, ugh, song.”

The Dandy Warhols play Eatons Hill Hotel next Saturday at 8pm, $76, eatonshillhotel.com.au

Originally published as Dandy Warhols decry gentrification of hometown of Portland