The Dolly Rocker Movement – A Purple Journey Into the Mod Machine (Bad Afro Records, 2006)

The Dolly Rocker Movement do far more than pass The Acid Test on this their first of two albums in one year, “A Purple Journey Into The Mod Machine,” where with dancing eyes and enchanting lysergic lyrics they swirl, soar, and expand the mystic boundaries of the psychedelic scene that was laid down in the mid sixties, infiltrating your wayward mind with layered textures and visionary emotions, and it’s all due a production complexity that is brilliant, tight and well considered. 

One of the first things you notice is the stylish conjuring luminescent environment into which The Dolly Rocker Movement invite you … making it plain from the get go, that they’re happy to have you stay as long as you like.  Each song has not only been sonically considered, but so have the song placements, creating a soundscape that moves with fluid motions, with songs never stumbling over each other, tracking in a sequence that is as much a visionary wonder as it is a delight for your ears … sounding for all the world as if they’ve stepped out of the golden era of psychedelic music, yet are wholly original and effortless.

The Dolly Rocker Movement will be the first to tell you that they’ve come to psychedelia through the use of mind altering substances, though they’ve made a concerted effort to lay the music on top of those experiences instead of meshing those experiences with the music, where things can get muddied, heading off in too many directions, and often with too many effects.  That being said, The Dolly Movement sound is fresh and enticing … a sheer pleasure to sit down with, close your eyes, light a candle, and let the moon guide you through the night.

*** In case you haven’t made the connection, “Dolly Rocker” is the title of a song by Syd Barret, late of Pink Floyd, and it goes like this:

Dolly Rocker, it’s called Dolly Rocker

It’s an old make of dress, well months old

You know, that sort of thing

I know a sweet girl

She done went out and paid for me

Then the sweet girl

After five, we went for tea

She’s seen a Dolly Rocker

She want a girl, she got her

I want to see her, I know I do

I love you darling, all for you

You wanna meet Pearl?

She’s as cute as a squirrel’s nut

She done see me

Said she thought she got the lot

She’s a Dolly Rocker

I wanna wait till I got her

Said she knew I know we know I do

Said she gotta see me lonely with you

Oceans may travel away so long

Senses in the gravel

To see yourself at home

Nice to be at home

All I’ll ever be forever

All my life you see when you got her

All I know, I know I show you baby

Through your head, push to you baby

Is a Dolly Rocker

She know what she got her

She seen a Dolly Rocker

She seen a Dolly Rocker

– Jenell Kesler

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