Artist: The Dolly Rockers
Album: The Heat
Label: Huh? Records
Year: 2004
Reviewed By: Woodstock Slim
Without a doubt the best album to hit the shelves in years. The band put out their first album 1990 and kept on showing us how it was done. South African bands have come up with a lot of strange combination and interpretations(mostly commercial and overplayed themes and genres) over the years but this was the best. I guess it's only in the last few years that the bands have actually gotten better and try to steer away from bands that get all the girls. Last good band I heard was No friends of Harry and that was not all together good but the best we had out there. The Springbok Nude Girls came round a few times waving in and out of pop and sub-pop. The Indie band scene was as I always suspected dominated by bands that sounds like Sound Garden and other bullshit American teenage pop nonsense. All the bands here think you should sound like the top ten leading bands to make it big anywhere, even here.
The Dolly Rockers, does not. With 'The Heat' in one hand and 'I think a Halo' by Jane Rademeyer in the other, it is easy to define and redefine SA music. Donnelly rolls in and out of tight black suede outfits to his brown leather chaps and dismounting his horse to climb into a sleek black Jaguar with a big engine... self proclaimed savior of Rock and Roll and at this point he definitely appears to be exactly that... but what lies ahead. What will he forge from his 6 string to top 'The Heat'. The album is studded with greats like Jaci Smith, Carolyn Beyer, Megan Choritz, Jessica Taylor and Lisa van Zyl. Bringing the album to a Gothy kind of Rockabilly Melancholy Country Twang Buzz Theater production in places. It goes all over the place and Donnelly pushes the envelope of a totally new genre. I've never heard anything like it. It haunts like Bauhaus and twangs like Mica P and thumps like Johnny Burnette and ripps like Jack Rabbit Slim!
The Bands who have heard this album have set their controls and those who have not will fail to reach the crescent and will be drowned in the wake of The Dolly Rockers.