The backlash has begun – in the wake of the Brian Jonestown Massacre-focussed doco Dig!, Portland, Oregon veterans the Dandy Warhols no longer seemed cool; they came off as calculated careerists. As such, the band’s fifth album, Odditorium or Warlords of Mars, hasn’t so much been greeted with apathy but outright fury.

Whilst frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor is not exactly Anton Newcombe, what sets him apart is that as a songwriter he’s got great touch. Whether it is on the impassioned wafts of “Love is the New Feel Awful” or the loosely swaggering Stones-y rave-up “All the Money or the Simply Life Honey”, the songs on Odditorium... are memorable and just downright great. That ain’t something you can necessarily say about anything the Brian Jonestown Massacre have ever delivered.

So will Odditorium... send the Dandy Warhols into the big leagues in America? Unlikely: put simply, it’s too deliberately obtuse for that. It’s also, arguably, the band’s best record to date, and don’t they just know it: archly humorous, this is the Dandy Warhols as you’ve always wanted them to be – the songs are awesomely funky, insatiably groovy and just plainly very, very cool.

Great chunks of sound are explored and extrapolated on throughout the course of Odditorium... – where the pre-80’s revival `80’s-fixated Welcome to the Monkey House was a purely pop song focussed effort, the likes of “Love is the New Feel Awful”, “Easy”, and “Holding Me Up” all stretch over the seven-minute mark, while closer “A Loan Tonight” goes past eleven. Recorded in their home-built home studio (the titular artefact here) in downtown Portland, the Dandy Warhols have taken a lot of time and care crafting Odditorium..., and it’s worked a treat.