Review: Dolls' 'Sez So' says 'We still rock'

It was supposed to be an endless party. After six years, two highly influential records, and an avalanche of bad business and substance abuse juju, the New York Dolls took a twenty-eight year vacation. In the meantime they became the icons of proto-punk, the forerunners of glam-rock, and the victim of every lazy critic who got a deal at the hyphen store. What’s a great rock & roll band to do?

Well, if you’re the New York Dolls you reconvene at Morrissey’s request for London’s Meltdown Festival in 2004. Minus two old pals -- guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan -- singer David Johansen, guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and bassist Arthur Kane (plus some spot-on new recruits) took London by storm, surprising even their biggest fans with the power and vitality of their performance. Then the flu Arthur Kane thought he’d contracted in London turned out to be leukemia. Two weeks later he was gone.

Johansen and Sylvain had too much fun rediscovering the joys of their old material and performing live together to let another death deter them (just how touched they were by Arthur’s passing is evident, though, in the wonderful documentary “New York Doll,” which chronicles Arthur’s sweet, crazy life). In 2006, the “new” New York Dolls released “One Day it Will Please Us to Remember Even This,” a knockout of a record that reprised former glories and pointed toward the future.

But before we talk about the future, let’s talk a little about the past. No doubt, when they were kids the New York Dolls loved to subvert square notions of proper rock star attire. But anyone who confused their tarted up androgyny with real cross dressing or transvestitism has never been to a good drag show. And beyond the spandex and stilettos, as Sylvain Sylvain insisted, you had the blues. Or as singer David Johansen said recently, “I can’t stand the term ‘punk band’. It sounds like marching music. With punk, you’re painting yourself into a corner. I like music that swings.”

Swing they’ve always done. Media nonsense aside, the New York Dolls were great in the Seventies because they had wit, energy, and personality. They played a wildly successful hybrid of everything from girl group sounds and soul, to Chicago blues and fifties rock – all sent into a Stones/Who fueled overdrive. In other words, credit them for inspiring the Clash; don’t blame them for Motley Crue.

So, it’s 2009, baby. You can drop the hyphens. All you need is the ampersand. The New York Dolls were and are a terrific rock & roll band. “’Cause I Sez So” makes today’s case for that nicely.

Produced by Todd Rundgren, who steered the careening ship of their 1973 debut, “Sez” is an all studs showing representation of a great band. Recorded in Rundgren’s home studio in Hawaii, only a rocksteady take on their classic “Trash,” which demonstrates the band’s love for classic Jamaican harmonizers like the Paragons and the Heptones, betrays the balmy setting. For the most part this could have been cut in the East Village.

Missing from “Remember” are the bubblegum joys of “Gotta Get Away from Tommy” and “Rainbow Store.” “Sez” is a bit darker affair. It lacks the transcendent quality of “Remember.” But it doesn’t take long for its bruised charm to win you over. The opening track (and title tune) is a grinding rocker about surveillance and endangered privacy. Sylvain and guitarist Steve Conte trade tough, sinewy lines in a way that suggests something Keith Richards once said, “You don’t go to the music shop to buy a lead guitar.”

For “Muddy Bones” Johansen rages about a “permanent apocalypse” behind a maelstrom of guitars. On “Better Than You,” a Dylanesque love song to an artsy, Zen-muse, he takes an adversary to task for talking “nasty” about his “baby,” telling him “you ain’t even got no class, I’m gonna have to kick your ass.” Of course this is followed by lyrics about “destiny’s last dance, “mystical frenzy,’ and “the hysteria of the condemned.” At 59, Johansen is part sass, part sage. He’s a cross between Alan Watts and Huntz Hall, equal measures existential philosopher and Bowery Boy. His baritone croon to the songs’ folk-rock strum resonates with his love for deep soul music.

“Sez” suggests a pre-recording weekend grooving to old favorites. “Lonely So Long” evokes the Rascals in more than title (and it’s adorned with a nice lick borrowed from the Beatles “It Won’t Be Long”). “My World” rocks dervish style, powered by bassist Sami Yaffa and drummer Brian Delaney’s fat grooves. It’s accented by harmonies reminiscent of the Yardbirds’ “Still I’m Sad.” “Making Rain” and “Drowning” owe more than a little to the Who’s sound and fury; “Drowning” also evokes another old Johansen model, Eric Burdon. “This is Ridiculous” mixes Leiber-Stoller with Howlin’Wolf in a raw, bluesy, affectionate pastiche.

“Sez” closes with “Exorcism of Despair,” a howling rocker that’s a kissin’ cousin to the MC5’s “Ramblin’ Rose.” Johansen rhymes “existential nausea” with “singin’ to alla ya.” Syl and Steve respond with “yeah, oh yeah, uh huh” like they were the Coasters as Greek chorus to Johansen’s philosophical rap. Thirty-six years on the endless party still rolls. It’s rock & roll music, baby, as if that wasn’t, uh, glam(orous) enough.

| Steve Wilson, Special to The Star

Comments

[Jimmy Dude-a-fix]

Sweet!!! I miss Arthur...What a Great Person & Gentle Human! He is missed by many! Blackie Lawless feels the same!!

[Dave C.]

Many a Star has influences often from the underground scene that simply couldn't hold it together well enough to really go the distance to fame themselves so I guess others act like a surrogate in a way, but this is how legends are sometimes born. Lineages need genius to start, such often never noticed till these great ones are long gone from us.