SPILL FEATURE: I LIKE HEARING SOMEBODY ELSE’S IDEAS OF WHAT A SONG COULD BE – A CONVERSATION WITH PETER HOLMSTRÖM OF THE DANDY WARHOLS

I LIKE HEARING SOMEBODY ELSE’S IDEAS OF WHAT A SONG COULD BE

A CONVERSATION WITH PETER HOLMSTRÖM OF THE DANDY WARHOLS

Alternative rockers The Dandy Warhols had a string of successful hit songs in the late ’90s and early 2000s, such as “Bohemian Like You”, “Every Day Should Be A Holiday”, “Godless” “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth”, and “We Used To Be Friends”. Since then, the band, which consists of Courtney Taylor-Taylor, Peter Holmström, Zia McCabe, and Brent DeBoer, has still been going strong for many years. In 2024, they released the heavy rocker/metal album Rockmaker. They got plenty of big name artists for the album, including Slash from Guns N’ Roses, Debbie Harry of Blondie, and Black Francis of Pixies. The Dandy Warhols recently released the EP Rock Remaker, an assortment of remixed Rockmaker songs. Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Holmström and chat about a number of things.

“I like hearing somebody else’s ideas of what a song could be or where they take it,” Holmström says about the new EP. “You can switch a song’s feeling. You can change the whole vibe, even the meaning of lyrics, by the way it sounds. It’s really cool, and the reverse is true. I love doing that to other people’s music. In my case, something always jumps out, and that’s always the starting point, and then see where it takes you. It’s fun. It ultimately just kind of cycles back, too, and helps me with my own music creation. It always inspires something, or I learn a new trick.”

The Dandy Warhols were able to work with many artists that they are big fans of for Rock Remaker. GLOK/Andy Bell (Ride and Oasis), Trentemøller, Oliver Ackermann (A Place To Bury Strangers), the electronic duo Night Club, and Jagz Kooner put their own spin on songs from Rockmaker. It was almost an entire album of remixes. “I was really pushing for a whole album of remixes,” shares Holmström. “I had a whole bunch of other ones lined up to do, but I couldn’t get anybody interested in funding that side of it.” Even though Rock Remaker did not end up being a full album, Holmström still had a great time. “We got to work with Andy Bell. I’ve admired his guitar playing forever. I like his remix work and electronic projects quite a bit. That was fantastic. Trentemøller as well. Having Anders do a remix was amazing. I hope we get to work with him more in the future. That was kind of part of the deal. He did the remix. Courtney and I owe him tracks or something in the future. That’s gonna be great. Oliver from A Place To Bury Strangers is always, always an honour to have him involved. Just his flavours of audio destruction are amazing. He really just took something and ran with it to the extreme, but it is still somehow beautiful and emotionally captivating. What he does is really cool.”

All the remix versions of the songs turned out to be vastly different than the original versions. “The Night Club version of ‘The Cross’ was kind of exactly what we hoped for,” says Holmström. “It changed for sure, but the idea of what we hoped for and what happened was kind of exactly right. Oliver’s take on ‘I Will Never Stop Loving You’ and just switching the relationship between Debbie’s vocal and Courtnery’s vocal and just the noise. It was fantastic.”

The Dandy Warhols released Rock Remaker on a limited-edition special Moon vinyl. “Who doesn’t love all the fancy colors, splatter, and swirls, and everything you can do – That’s just a fun thing,” comments Holmström. “As far as vinyl for listening, you just have to pay slightly more attention because that record is going to end, and you have to flip it or turn it off. You’re more involved in the listening process. With streaming, so much of it is just background noise while you do other things. Vinyl is more of a conscious ‘I’m going to listen to this now.’ I think that’s important, especially to the people that make music.”

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Last year’s Rockmaker was quite a departure from The Dandy Warhols’ original sound. It is a lot heavier, more aggressive, and louder, occasionally sounding like a metal record. Additionally, the album is also very riff oriented. “At first, I was really not into the idea of the record at all as I’ve kind of gotten away from that style of music,” reflects Holmström. “As soon as I came up with that riff for ‘The Cross’, I kind of found how I could bring something to the band and that record. It really kind of opened up a new way of writing for me. It ended up being very enjoyable. I ended up co-writing over half the record with Courtney for this one. It was good. There’s some stuff I initially thought was very silly. Some of those riffs, I don’t know, felt silly, like ‘haha’ me pretending to write a metal riff. Then our ultimate take on what we turn that into is still a very Dandys’ kind of thing, and you almost don’t notice the silly riff.”

2025 marks the 20th anniversary of their beloved album, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, which features one of their biggest hits, “Bohemian Like You”. “That was sort of the changing point for everything for us,” reflects Holmström. “Not initially, though. It was initially a flop. It was doing less well than Come Down. It didn’t have the ‘hits’ until we got the support of a massive ad campaign, and it turned it all around. The making of that record was kind of the last record in the ‘old style.’ There were song ideas that started. Then, we got together and rehearsed them. Then, went into our studio and recorded them. By the end of that record, it’d gone through Pro Tools, and that was the first time I really saw what that could do. Every record since then was more constructed or built in Pro Tools like the demo goes in, then you start piling shit on top of it. Then later, we would weed out shit and then end up with the final song.”

One of The Dandy Warhols’ most well-known songs is “We Used To Be Friends”, which was the theme song for the popular TV show Veronica Mars. “I’ve never seen the show – I should probably watch it or at least an episode,” laughs Holmström. “But it was great because all of a sudden, there was a whole new generation of kids showing up to our gigs, so it worked fantastic in that way. I remember touring, and all of a sudden, there’s kids out there again. They found us through that show. I’m sure some of them stuck with us, and some of them didn’t. It’s kind of the way it works. It’s always some people just stick around longer. Same with ‘Bohemian’ and the ad campaign and Dig! for that matter. We need another one of those.”

An upcoming book of the entire history of the band, titled The Book Of The Dandys, has been compiled by Justine Penklis. Penklis has been working on it for over a decade now. Soon, it will be available for fans to read. “Initially, I think we were hoping to have it out for the 20th anniversary, then the 25th anniversary, and now the 30th anniversary of the band has gone past,” comments Holmström. “It’s been done for quite a while, but it’s just the getting it actually made part that seems to be difficult… I saw a version of it. I assume it’s the final. There is some writing, but it’s mostly pictures.”

A new album is on the way as well. “There’s always an album being worked on,” smiles Holmström. “There is always song idea left over from previous records, little bits and pieces which will become songs. There is always ideas of what the next record is and the next one after that.” The release date for the new album remains uncertain, but the band is hopeful it will be out soon. “I’m going to guess it’s next year. I know Courtney really wants to put it out this year, but I think that’s unrealistic.”

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Main Photo Credit: Nicole Nodland