Maintaining your profile as ‘living legends’ requires a lot of hard work. In the case of the NEW YORK DOLLS, that reputation has come at a very high price. The highly-influential Big Apple sleaze rockers’ first two albums were a major influence on the Sex Pistols and are thus recognised as important blueprints in the development of Punk. Something that still demands major respect if you inhabit my early 40s demographic.
However, the two trailblazing albums made by the original Dolls prior to 1975 came at a very high price. Messrs. Thunders, Murcia and Nolan are no longer around to discuss them and – more recently – original bassist Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane succumbed to leukaemia shortly after long-time fan Morrissey had encouraged the band to regroup for the 2004 ‘Meltdown’ Festival.
Nonetheless, there’s been a fair amount of goodwill heaped on the revamped band, even though vocalist David Johansen and guitarist Sylvain Sylvain are the only original Dolls still standing. ‘Dancing Backwards in High Heels’ is the group’s third post-reformation album in a healthy six years and it was recorded in – of all places – Newcastle-upon-Tyne during 2010.
Sadly, the resulting LP isn’t called ‘Howay, Man, it’s the New York Dolls, y’Knaa’ and neither does it appear to have been fuelled by industrial-strength amounts of brown ale or resort to covering the high points of the Angelic Upstarts back catalogue. More’s the pity.
Despite Tyneside’s best efforts, ‘Dancing Backwards in High Heels’ is still utterly steeped in Noo Yoik Noo Yoik. It might initially surprise a tad in that a very noticeable ‘60s girl-group Pop vibe permeates many of the tracks, although the band’s long-term love of the genre (Shangri-La’s producer George ‘Shadow’ Morton worked the desk for 1974’s ‘Too Much Too Soon’) is pretty well documented.
The record’s best tracks mostly come in a glut at the beginning. The opening ‘Streetcake’ is great, suggestive fun. It rhymes “banquette” with “Marie Antoinette”, name checks Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels and treats us to a fine piano solo. ‘Talk to Me’ benefits from Johansen’s Iggy-style vocals, fat sax and prowling rhythms and the bitchily memorable ‘I’m so Fabulous’ makes like their very own glam-my ‘Rip Her to Shreds.’
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So far, so fabulous dahling, but then things start to go awry. On ‘Fool for You Baby’, Johansen makes an unlikely snubbed suitor (“I’ll jump on the Staten Island ferry/ there won’t be anyone left for you to marry”), although it’s preferable to the moan-y ‘Kids Like You’ and the dopey, drug-gy ‘Baby Tell me What You’re On’ where Johansen’s stoned drawl (“baby, I’m so gone!”) just sounds desperate.
They haven’t entirely blown their load. Although titles don’t come much more self-explanatory than ‘I Sold my Heart to the Junkman’, the song itself is a decadent, string-driven thrill, while the celebratory ‘Round and Round She Goes’ clearly remembers Murray the K and Rock’n’Roll radio, bringing The Strangeloves favourably to mind. After this sterling recovery, it’s a shame they throw it away with the laboured funk stew of ‘Funky but Chic’ and the tropically-tinged groove of ‘End of the summer’ and accordingly limp to the finish line.
Ultimately, ‘Dancing Backwards in High Heels’ is a bit of a letdown. It promises a starry-eyed, neon-lit night out but more often than not the thrills are too cheap to sustain it and it often comes over sounding as clumsy as its’ title. It certainly won’t sully the legend, but it adds little of real value to it either.
New York Dolls on MySpace
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