Album review: New York Dolls, 'Dancing Backward in High Heels'
1.5 stars (out of 4)
The New York Dolls were “too much too soon,” to paraphrase one of their early album titles. They presaged punk, invented glam rock and left behind a trove of great songs before imploding in the mid-‘70s. Their reunion three decades later, at the behest of superfan Morrissey, has produced two mediocre albums in which the only two remaining original Dolls – singer David Johansen and guitarist Sylvain Sylvain – tried to revisit the glory days with a bunch of stand-ins.
Now comes “Dancing Backward in High Heels” (429 Records), in which Johansen-Sylvain abandon re-creating the Dolls’ flashy trash past in search of something more introspective. Three tracks work: “Talk to Me Baby” simmers with playfulness and sensuality, “Kids Like You” conjures after-hours melancholy with brooding organ and sighing guitar, and the subtle orchestration on the ballad “You Don’t Have to Cry” makes it sound like a lost Rolling Stones classic from the band’s baroque pop period in the mid-‘60s.
Otherwise, the results verge on the embarrassing. There’s bawdy pop blues (“Streetcake”), clichéd New York bravado (“I’m so Fabulous”), a thinly veiled rewrite of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” (“Round and Round She Goes”), an inferior remake of a 1978 Johansen solo classic (“Funky But Chic”), and an inexcusable detour into reggae called “End of the Summer.” It’s the end of something, alright, and Johansen and Sylvain – as great as they once were as the backbone of the Dolls -- should get the message and move on.
greg@gregkot.com