In 2006 Sydney band The Dolly Rocker Movement released two critically acclaimed contemporary psychedelic albums. Electric Sunshine illustrated the chemically enhanced blend of folk, garage and country that characterised the band’s early set. The follow-up album, Purple Journey Into the Mod Machine adopted as its thematic premise a journey through space and time, marrying the stylish and colourful aesthetic of the London Roundhouse with the inter-stellar imagery of Stanley Kubrick.
2009 brings the latest instalment in the Dolly Rocker Movement’s kaleidescopic journey. Our Days Mind the Tyme owes its genesis to the influence of Sky Saxon, Arthur Lee and Syd Barrett, yet sparkles as bright, and fresh as the morning sun. From the baroque pop of A Sound for Two, to the tight garage licks of My Heavenly Way and Sold for Sinners, to the billowing pop elegance of The Only One and The Ecstacy Once Told, this is an album touched by the hand of spiritual enlightenment.
Ever since the hippies of the 1960s mutated into the marketing executives of the 1980s, psychedelia has been cloaked in the suffocating presence of romantic hyperbole and commodity fetishism. But beneath the tortured rhetoric and misty-eyed memories is a vibrant artistic spirit that few truly comprehend. It’s that spirit – built upon freedom, beauty, happiness and an attractive melody – that The Dolly Rocker Movement taps into.
Our Days Mind the Tyme is out now through Off the Hip Records, with the 7-inch single Brave New World available through Bad Afro International.
