[ rock/pop ]
From the Woody Guthrie-referencing title and artwork, and a straight-faced (if playfully skronky) cover of Merle Travis' "16 Tons," you might suppose that This Machine (The End) would be the Dandy Warhols' stab at a folk-influenced record. But while it's probably their most earnest and reflective full-length to date, this is less a conceptual foray than a consolidation of established stylistic terrain for the increasingly guttural Courtney Taylor-Taylor and his Portlandian posse. Happily so, 'cause the Dandys are always better when checking their pretensions at the door and focusing on their strengths; in this case, that's churning out tight, chunky, middlebrow guitar-pop and the occasional scuzzy, Velvets-indebted rocker. Even the album's requisite psych-drone excursion is kept relatively concise at under six minutes, though you can bet that'll merely be a jumping-off point for live renditions.
Wed., May 30, 7:30 p.m., $23.50-$25, with Psychic Ills and 1776, The Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-6888, thetroc.com.
