CD Review: New York Dolls

If lightning never strikes twice in the same place, then what do we
make of the reunion between the New York Dolls and producer Todd
Rundgren, whose first pairing on the Dolls’ 1973 debut resulted in one
of the decade’s most enduring and influential documents of pre-punk
rock mayhem? Is ‘Cause I Sez So an attempt to recreate the
bottled magic of three and a half decades ago? Hardly, and both the
Dolls and Rundgren recognize this.

Only David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain survive from the original
Dolls, and there’s the little matter of 36 years of accumulated
history; you can’t unring a bell. So you do exactly what Johansen,
Sylvain, the new Dolls and Rundgren: they make a statement about where
the band is now, not where it’s been, and there’s no better example of
this than on the laconic reggae/’60s pop reworking of their snarling
punk ode “Trash.” But just as “Personality Crisis” led off the Dolls’
debut with a fist-in-your-face declaration of what was about to come,
the band fronts its fourth studio album with an anthemic title track, a
three-minute slice of street-tempered punk. Still, there’s nothing on
their first album to approach the blues swagger of “Ridiculous” or the
spaghetti-western shimmer of “Temptation to Exist.” Perhaps more
telling is the Dolls’ softer side, represented by the ballad “Better
Than You,” a tender/tough track that Paul Westerberg would be proud to
call his own, and “Lonely So Long,” a romantic blend of the Dolls and
the Velvets. This ain’t 1973, and the New York Dolls know it. That’s
why they skillfully avoid trying to recreate the snotty glory of their
youth and craft a new testament to their grizzled wisdom and tenacious
ability to survive. — Brian Baker