One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This [Bonus Track]

Performer: New York Dolls
Artist: Iggy Pop; Michael Stipe
Distributor: MSI Music Distribution

Notes: As one of the key progenitors of punk, the New York Dolls created in their brief existence a sloppy, sleazy, glorious rock-&-roll sound that has rarely been equaled. That may explain why it took the Dolls 32 years to follow up their last proper studio album, 1974's TOO MUCH TOO SOON. The long hiatus can also be attributed to the deaths of three of the band's five original members--Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan, and Arthur Kane. But where such circumstances would have relegated most acts to the dustbin of history, lead singer David Johansen and guitarist Sylvian Sylvain recruited replacement musicians to create a new Dolls album in 2006's ONE DAY IT WILL PLEASE US TO REMEMBER EVEN THIS. What's even more surprising is that ONE DAY, though not quite on par with the band's monumental early releases, bristles with classic Dolls energy. Their ragged, bluesy bite and doo wop flourishes are here on tracks like "We're All in Love" and "Dance Like a Monkey," and even when the band sounds uncharacteristically tight and polished, there is still much to recommend the disc. It stands as a testament to the vital, enduring power of rock & roll. The prospect of a new studio album from the New York Dolls in the year 2006 is a strange and puzzling thing, especially without the presence of Johnny Thunders, Arthur Kane, and Jerry Nolan, all of whom are currently gigging on another astral plane. But after the Dolls made an unexpected and surprisingly convincing return to the concert stage in 2004, David Johansen, Sylvain Sylvain, and their newly appointed partners started writing new material and took the risky step of taking the new band into the studio a mere 32 years after Too Much Too Soon. One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This has two major hurdles to clear for anyone who cared about the Dolls: they have to create something akin to the sloppy majesty of their two iconic studio albums without the help of ace guitar mauler Thunders, and they have to write songs with the same gritty blare and strutting attitude that came as second nature when they were twenty-somethings. Musically, this version of the Dolls is much more precise than they ever were back in the day, but the opening track, "We're All in Love," captures a fair share of the rattly subway train rhythm that was the Dolls aural trademark, and most of these tunes don't aim for the same degree of rock action as the group's most famous tunes, there's still an admirable crash-and-bash energy on "Gimme Luv and Turn on the Light" and "Dance Like a Monkey," and there are clear gestures towards the Dolls' other sonic touchstones: vintage girl group sounds ("Rainbow Store"), old-school R&B ("Take a Good Look at My Good Looks"), the blues ("I Ain't Got Nothin'"). Just as importantly, David Johansen hasn't sung rock & roll with this kind of strength, authority, and guts in years, and guitarists Sylvain and Steve Conte crank out the fire without too much audible worry about the weight of the past. (It also helps that the rhythm section is right on the money and Jack Douglas delivers the muscular but unobtrusive production this band always needed and never got.) As for the songs, with their frequent philosophical musings and multisyllabic constructions, this is heady stuff coming from what was once was a band of decadent street punk fashion mavens, but let's face it, one of the reasons Johansen and Sylvain survived and their bandmates didn't is they had a vision of the future that went further than the next party and the next fix, and the best songs on this album look at where these guys have been and where they're going with a mixture of intelligence, perception, and street smarts. And if you're just looking for dumb fun, "Dance Like a Monkey" delivers. On One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This, the New York Dollsare a far cry from the band that recorded "Personality Crisis" in 1972, but the album offers a reasonable approximation of the Dolls as smart, battle-hardened survivors who've got something to say and have a few laughs while saying it. If it's not quite a triumph, it's challenging and ambitious stuff that rocks on out and doesn't tarnish the memory of what Johansen and Sylvain accomplished so many years ago. [A Japanese version added a bonus track.] ~ Mark Deming

Rolling Stone (p.90) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Johansen crows with craggy defiance atop the part 'Personality Crisis' but also packs the matured anxiety and tattered-Sixties classicism of Johansen's 1978 solo debut." Rolling Stone (p.103) - Ranked #12 in Rolling Stone's "The Top 50 Albums Of 2006" -- "Everywhere Johansen mourns mortality and celebrates contingency in the most searching lyrics of the year..." Spin (p.82) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Spectorish balladry, monkey noises, and odes to fishnets and cigarettes abound." Entertainment Weekly (p.65) - "[They] opt for the rowdy professionalism of Johansen's '70s/'80s solo efforts. And make no mistake: That's a good thing." -- Grade: B+ Q (p.109) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[T]his time they've got things like proper arrangements, percussionists, a honky-tonk pianist and a whole life of sleaze to draw upon." Alternative Press (p.228) - "Guest spots from Iggy Pop, Michael Stipe and Against Me!'s Tom Gabel are a pleasing nod to modernity, but REMEMBER's strengths are in its time-warp atmosphere." Mojo (Publisher) (p.92) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "'Dancing Like A Monkey'...sees Johansen beating his skinny chest on their raucous, chaotic call of the wild."

With inspiration from British glam and US proto-punks like the Stooges, the New York Dolls were the originators of the NYC trash aesthetic that inspired subsequent generations of punk bands. Churning out garage riffs that tipped their hat to 1960s R&B, they were the Stones of the first punk generation. Their outrageous image and brash sound gained them attention, but failed to make them stars, and David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, and Syl Sylvain all went on to solo careers after just two Dolls albums. In 2004, the Dolls reunited, with surviving members Sylvain, Johansen, and Arthur Kane making a triumphant festival appearance. Sadly, Kane died shortly after, but Johansen and Sylvain played another show dedicated to the memory of all the deceased dolls (Kane, Thunders, Jerry Nolan, Billy Murcia). In 2006, the remaining band members recorded their third official studio album to almost universal acclaim.

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