Past, Present & Future…
Released on March 14, Dancing Backward In High Heels is the third New York Dolls LP since the band’s unlikely, Morrissey inspired, resurrection in 2004.
The first one, naturally, benefitted from Dolls’ history, big name acolytes like Michael Stipe and Iggy Pop guesting, and bringing their PR with them. Cause I Sez So (2009), saw Todd Rundgren, who produced the band in their ‘street Stones’ heyday, back in the control room. So Dancing Backward is the first time in six years that vocalist David Johansen and guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, the surviving originals, have gone into the studio as free as they care to be from the original killer chaos. And they emerged with a wonderful, emotive record. Something, incidentally, you feel Jagger and Richards would kill for.
“I’m not putting anybody down and I’m not trying to compare it with earlier versions of The Dolls, but I think that these are the best songs that we have ever come up with,” Sylvain said.
With Steve Conte and Sami Yaffa quitting the band to join Michael Monroe’s tour, Johansen and Sylvain dispensed with the notion of the five piece New York Dolls. From this record on, it will be the core duo, and guests. So, with original Blondie guitarist, and fellow New Yorker, Frank Infante serving as surrogate Johnny Thunders, and producer Jason Hill taking on bass duties, the record plays to Johansen’s voice, from the rocking Round And Round She Goes, to the feral blues. Kids Like You, You Don’t Have To Cry and The End Of The Summer, with Sylvain’s telling backing vocal, are the songs I go back to. Laments maybe, but with chin up, and fists clenched.
There’s typical angst and covers on the album, Johansen’s Fabulous Rant tees up the straights for I’m So Fabulous, ‘Nebulous New Yorkers is blasphemous/it makes a giant ass of all of us’, and the take on Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles I sold My Heart To The Junkman is straight out of the Dolls’ toy box. Mainline, Shangri-Las cool...
Dancing Backward In High Heels is the New York Dolls accepting their age and status, and making it the most wonderful thing in the world. ‘Like Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels’, as Johansen has it on opening track, Streetcake. Together with PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, the best album of the year so far…
New York Dolls, with David Bowie guitarist Earl Slick, play two shows at the Old Vic Tunnels in London, on March 30 and 31, part of a short UK tour supporting the new album.
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