Album Review: The Dollyrots - "Down The Rabbit Hole"

 

Mainstays on the pop-punk scene for the last decade or so, this new release from the Dollyrots is a B-sides and rarities compilation presumably designed to fill in the gaps while we wait for an album proper from the Angeleno trio.

Dealing with the rarities album first, it would be easy to think that this would be a collection of disparate songs that doesn't hold together but the big surprise is that it actually holds up well as an album in its own right. Tunes like Too Fun For My Health, Just Like All The Rest and Be My Leia literally scream "I coulda been a contendah!!" Rocky-style with their big sunny singalongs that would have been hits in the hands of a more commercially fortunate band. Elsewhere, the spiky Little Miss Impossible sees their love of the Ramones well and truly being put centre stage with its "woah-oh-oh" refrain, Super Mega Ultraviolet shows a darker side to their output and the ominous Get Radical even sees them getting all political when you least expect it. It's only the slightly over-shouty Valentine's Day and a couple of slightly rough sounding alternate versions that provide the red lights on this joyride.

The covers album is good fun as well - covers of Nirvana's Breed and Rancid's Ruby Soho show the snarlier side to the Dollyrots' album while their scuzzed up cover of Lisa Loeb's Stay (I Missed You) shows their playful side coming to the fore. Some of the selections fit the band like a glove - Bowling For Soup's High School Never Ends is an obvious choice given the links between the two bands (Jaret from BFS even co-writes one of the songs on the rarities disc) while the group do the pure pop blasts of the Contours' Do You Love Me?, Katrina & The Waves' Walking On Sunshine, the Undertones' Teenage Kicks and Generation X's Dancing With Myself justice with the fun well and truly sucking you in.

Fair play to the Dollyrots, Down The Rabbit Hole could easily have just been a quick "yeah, here ya go, this'll do" dashed out in five minutes affair but it manages to transcend the usual nature of these sort of round-up albums to become a damn good selection of songs in its own right which'll bring a ray of sunshine to these dreary February days when you listen to it.

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NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

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