The Dolly Rocker Movement – Electric Sunshine (Bad Afro Records, 2006)

If anything, the Dolly Rocker Movement’s “Electric Sunshine” represents the peak of an acid trip, coming off a bit more heavy, more frantic, fully blossomed and ready to course with the lysergic that’s now cascading deeply within your brain.  With that being said, the music is still enticingly hypnotizing, engaging, enchanting, and at times blissful, especially with the female vocals that create an ease to the psychedelic ride, and giving the listener some breathable space within the context of the voyage that’s been laid out for you … and make no mistake about it, The Dolly Rocker Movement has structured and calculated your assent.

If the music harkens back to the psychedelia of the mid 60’s, then so do the liner notes, which go on to claim that the world is filled with electric sunshine by day, and yellow moonlight by night … as if through suggestion, they are setting the stage for this adventure.  Most of the songs are lively and pulsating, and as on “A Purple Journey Into The Mod Machine,” the vocals are breathy, mature, and in just the right tenor for mystic storytelling.  With that in mind, it may seem odd for me to suggest that there’s a delicateness to the songs, some with tinges of country, ah la The Byrds, that is in no way distracting.  And more, it’s as if they’ve skillfully managed to incorporate aspects of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Quicksilver Messenger Service, along with current artists such as The Sand Pebbles, and they do this not by regulating the sound of their influences, but by embodying them in the most wispy of fashions, as if these influences are mere smoke floating through their notes. 

“Electric Sunshine,” along with the other Dolly Rocker Movement albums create an enjoyable ride, fulfilling the criteria, and standing shoulder to shoulder with the greats from those long lost heady nights of so long ago.

– Jenell Kesler

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