THE Dandy Warhols are arguably the most weird commercially-successful band of the past 20 years.
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In modern rock's mostly-vanilla landscape, the Oregon psych-rock legends injected the late '90s and early 2000s with a kaleidoscopic dose of wacky haircuts, vintage clothing and a trove of hits like Bohemian Like You, We Used To Be Friends and Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth.
They helped craft Portland's hipster cool, years before the bearded coffee snobs and boutique beer connoisseurs flocked in.
When Weekender catches up with frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor to discuss The Dandy Warhols' appearance at Newcastle music festival Scene & Heard the 52-year-old sounds chilled. So much so, he's almost asleep.
But when asked to reflect on The Dandys' last trip to Newcastle for Fat As Butter in 2008, Taylor-Taylor the raconteur is away.
"When I was sitting in my hotel room I saw there was a live Dire Straits gig from 1982 which was playing on the TV, so I emailed Mark [Knopfler] and said, 'Hey man, I'm in Australia and I'm watching a video of you guys live in 82'," he says.
"He says, 'Oh mate, you've got to be careful down there, it's a very very rough place'."
Certainly the perceived "roughness" of Australia hasn't perturbed Taylor-Taylor and his bandmates Peter Holmstrm, Zia McCabe and Brent DeBoer. The Dandy Warhols have toured the country consistently over their 25-year history and DeBoer moved to Melbourne a decade ago.
"We can fly somewhere and it's summer," Taylor-Taylor says. "We can read menus there. We can read street signs.
"Almost everyone speaks English, more or less, and it's a kind of summer, beach-orientated culture. Australia is a great place for us to have landed some 20-so years ago."
Unlike several of the bands on the Scene & Heard line-up like Eskimo Joe and Magic Dirt, The Dandy Warhols are still actively releasing new material from their own studio, known as The Odditorium.
In January they released their 10th album Why You So Crazy and in the new year they plan to drop a cover of Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale, sung by Liv Tyler's mother Bebe Buell and a record with strings and acoustic versions of their greatest hits.
While pushing forward, Taylor-Taylor is also comfortable embracing nostalgia.
REVIEW & VIDEO: Take a look back at Scene & Heard's 2018 debut
"I've always been a very nostalgic-lost-in-some-other-dreamy-place guy," he says. "I remember being 13 and being nostalgic about things that I experienced when I was six.
"Nostalgia is just built into me and it's something I'm used to. I'm very overwhelmed with it and it's a kind of sad and wistful feeling for me.
"I won't be that nostalgic about Eskimo Joe because I don't know any of their songs. So I won't lie around weeping and crawl up in a ball. So it should be fine. I should be able to rock despite all the nostalgia."
Scene & Heard returns to Wickham Park on November 10.