The Dodos - Music From The Funhouse (1967)

If 'Sgt. Pepper...' cracked the egg of psychedelic pop earlier this year, 'Music From The Funhouse' by The Dodos smashes it on the floor, paints a moustache on the yolk, and invites you to dance to its surreal ride through the acid-drenched annals of time. The album opens with 'The Big Parade', a brassy, clattering number that marches out of the gate like a ragtag circus. It’s a dizzying overture, complete with luscious strings, marching band drums, and cryptic lyrics. It's as much a declaration of artistic intent as it is a giddy sonic prank. 'Funhouse Mirrors' slows things down but doesn’t let up on the weird, with the layered vocals and psychedelic sounds giving it an otherworldly feel. 'Crystalline Ballroom' is a shimmering ballad with fairy-tale lyrics, which ends wit a cacophony of sound effects, while 'Cotton Candy Tears' is actually quite a jaunty number, with some nice guitar-work. 'Up In The Air' is a buoyant track that filters early Kinks through a trapeze act, with a playful tempo and rich harmonies, giving it a sense of wonder that's impossible to resist. 'Did I Forget' harks back to their earlier work, and is a welcome break from the rampant psychedelia on offer so far, but we're soon back to the strangeness with 'The Clowns Scare Me', which is a deceptively catchy piece with paranoid lyrics and a great backwards guitar solo. The album closes with 'Hypercolour Kaleidoscope Cavalcade', which is six and half minutes of layered drones, backwards guitar loops, and heavily flanged vocals dripping with echo. 'Music From The Funhouse' has the makings of a cult classic, and with half of the twelve tracks hovering around the six-minute mark, it also gives the boys the chance to experiment, and play around with new sounds. It’s unafraid to be bizarre, and yet it’s filled with real melodic beauty and emotional depth. The Dodo's may be extinct in the mainstream, but in the funhouse of rock history, their music echoes on.

Track listing

01 The Big Parade 

02 Funhouse Mirrors

03 I Bumped My Head 

04 Time Flows So Slow

05 Why Wake Me? 

06 Crystalline Ballroom

07 Walk Through The Midway

08 Cotton Candy Tears 

09 Up In The Air

10 Did I Forget?

11 The Clowns Scare Me

12 Hypercolour Kaleidoscope Cavalcade

The Dodos - Yesterday's Coming Fast (1964)

The Dodos third album was also their motion picture debut, with the title track being mainly written by Joseph Lemmon, with great vocal performances by both Joseph and Samuel, and a solid backbeat by Bippo. It was their best single up to this point and went straight to number one both in the UK and the US, as well as other countries around the world. The title was taken from something Bippo had said during a press conference when asked how much longer the band thought they'd have success, to which Bippo said, "Well, alls I know is yesterday's comin' fast, so who knows what today will bring." The b-side, 'This Guy', was also written mainly by Joseph, and is one of his most straight forward love songs to this point, and features a great sax solo by Benji Jones of the Skipping Stones (squashing some of the rumours that the two bands saw each other as enemies, spread by the media). 'I Can Buy Nice Things' was the next single from the album, mainly written by Samuel, with help from Joseph with some of the lyrics and the melody of the chorus. It's all about how the boys might be getting some monetary gains but they realize that it can't buy them love. The song speaks directly to a young woman, asking her if she she'd like to share in the wealth, but her not being impressed. 'Mister Presenter' was a song written by Joseph Lemmon specifically to give Bippo a lead vocal performance on the album, but it ended up becoming a b-side instead. The song is actually quite ground-breaking for the group in many ways. First of all, sonically it is quite bold and inventive, with a mix of instrumentation and musical styles, and some pretty interesting effects and studio tricks. Secondly, lyrically the song is among the first of the more autobiographical that had nothing to do with teenage love. The song is about Lemmon's feelings about how the band were perceived and treated by the established old guard in show business, from television presenters and hosts to radio DJs, all the way to the business men that held their careers in their hands. His frustration is evident, and yet it produced a great piece of art and a real look at the future of where Dodos music would go. The third single from the album was 'Words We Said Today', which was a co-written song by Joseph & Samuel. In later years Joseph would point out that the idea and the majority of the song was Samuel's doing, but that he came up with the bridge and the idea to speed the song up at the end. The rest of the tracks from 'Yesterday's Coming Fast' were made up of early b-sides that were featured in the film, with the disc being their first soundtrack album. 

Track listing

01 Yesterdays Coming Fast 
02 Like The Stars Above 
03 Keep It Comin'
04 Mister Presenter
05 Over The Moon
06 I Can Buy Nice Things
07 Hand In Hand
08 If I Knew 
09 Words We Said Today 
10 Look At Her 
11 Cry Cry Cry
12 Maybe You'll Win
13 This Guy
14 Out Of The Way

The Dodos - Up The Block (1966)

In 1966, The Dodos released their highly influential and ground-breaking album, 'Up The Block'. A true innovation in sound, the Dodos left their more simplistic and singles based song-writing for more expansive and fresh sounding songs. With a harder edge than previous output, this record really shook the music scene and influenced many of their contemporaries to follow suit. The title, Up The Block evokes a sense of community which the Dodos both fostered and bristled against. This sentiment is explored within the songs of the album as well, on tracks like 'Marvelman' and 'Best Friends' which both take a combative look at their fan's expectations of them. Meanwhile songs like 'At the Pub', 'The Drums' and 'Honk That Horn' feel more like celebrations of their fans. There are a few classic Dodos boy meets girl songs, such as 'She Smiled At Me', 'Five Ways Till Love', 'Sun In My Eyes', and 'Blue Green Red', which all evoke the nostalgia of previous works, while also moving forward sonically. Two songs which were previously released as singles in late 1965 ('Magazine Blues' and 'One Day You Won't Need Us') were drastically reworked for the album, with completely different structure/sound and lyrical changes. The album had many sessions and there are drastically different alternate versions that were not used for the album which may be released at a later date as part of a rarities album. One such song is the side A closer, 'Dance It Away'. Written by Joseph Lemmon, the songs is a lumbering almost hypnotic song about watching your best girl give herself to the moment while dancing. 

The album version is also sung by Joseph, but there was a version sung by Samuel, who gave a wonderful vocal performance and raced through the song making it significantly shorter and punchier. The label wanted to release the Samuel version as a single, but the band and specifically Joseph fought to make the sixth single from the album 'Marvelman' instead, as Joseph felt more connected to the lyrical content of that song, and so the Samuel version while, breathtaking ,has yet to make the light of day. The Dodos were very staunch on the idea of providing value to their listeners, and so they always tried to make singles and album tracks different enough that no one felt cheated buying both. And this means that a wide selection of unreleased session tracks are in the Dodos vaults, all as good as the released version, but different. Of note is also Johnny's stepping up as far as song-writing goes on this album, having written 'At The Pub', 'Magazine Blues', 'Over Your Head', and 'One Day You Won't Need Us'. This was the first time in their career that Johnny had so many songs on an album. One of the album standouts has to be Bippo's 'The Drums'. A real joy of a track with not only a great vocal & percussion performance by the Dodos' drummer extraordinaire, but the rest of the band goes all in making it one of the most colourful and exciting tracks on the album. This is a rollicking good rock and roll album with something for everyone.  

Track listing

01 At The Pub
02 She Smiled At Me
03 Sun In My Eyes
04 Magazine Blues
05 Five Ways Till Love
06 Honk That Horn
07 Dance It Away
08 Blue Green Red
09 Over Your Head
10 Best Friends
11 The Drums
12 One Day You Won't Need Us
13 Marvelman

The Dodos - Photo Album (1966)

One of the 1966 albums by the Dodos is entitled 'Photo Album', and it features twelve tracks, including six singles, and as always, all the singles are different to the album versions. The Dodos believed in quality and value for their fans! The album shows the boys progressions into their psychedelic phase, with such classics as 'The March Of The Lonely', 'Round About Way', and of course the epic closing number, 'One More Time (For Those In The Back)'. That doesn't mean they sacrificed melody, as shown by such numbers as 'Moon in Your Eyes', 'Outta Sight (Outta Mind)', and 'It Hurts'. All throughout, it's classic Dodos song-writing, but a bit more mature than their 1965 albums, and with a wider palate of colours to work with.

Track listing

01 Hot Fuzz
02 Round About Way
03 Moon In Your Eyes
04 Your Mother Said No
05 Tight Spaces
06 The March Of The Lonely
07 It Hurts
08 Anything That Isn't You
09 Big Ben
10 Outta Sight (Outta Time)
11 Night On The Sound
12 One More Time (For Those In The Back) 

The Dodos - Up Close With The Dodos (1963)

The Dodos second LP, 'Up Close With The Dodos' saw many changes from their previous debut album. For one, Joseph Lemmon led the writing and sang more leads than on 'The World Wants To Know'. The album also went from recording on a two-track machine as they did on their debut to a four-track. This allowed for more texture in the recordings, and led to a leap in their song-writing. Johnny had much less lead singing on this album, but his lead guitar really made a jump in quality and in experimentation. Bippo's drumming also improved, and was recorded with a delay which gave it a much deeper and full sound. While this LP is still mainly full of "boy loves girl" type songs, there are definitely some more complex writing techniques involved. For example, 'He Told Me To Tell You' is written from the perspective of a guy telling his mate's girlfriend that their romance is over, and 'Do That Thing For You' is written from the perspective of the entire band talking to their fans (presumably the female ones). All in all, The Dodos second LP is both a step forward sonically and lyrically.

Track listing

01 Every Bit Of My Heart

02 Hold Me Close

03 Little One 

04 We Could Be So Good

05 He Told Me To Tell You

06 I Think I'm Losing You

07 I'm Gonna Be Your Guy

08 Caught In Your Web

09 Letters Of Love

10 Don't Give Up

11 Twice Before Today

12 Do That Thing For You

The Dodos - The World Wants To Know (1963)

As most people should have worked out by now, the recent post by The Chyknhawks was an AI generated pastiche of The Byrds, and there are few of these on the net at the moment, with a '1967 single' by The Brothers Gee, which bears more than a passing resemblance to late-60's Bee Gees, while Feel Flows takes on the Beach Boys at their own game. The Beatles are not spared either, and have the biggest catalogue, although to be honest they are the least convincing imitations. That's not to say that the songs are not worth hearing, and the spoof biography has been put together with tongue very much in cheek, while the covers have been lovingly created to look of the period that the 'album' came out. So here is the first album from The Dodos, 'released' in 1963, accompanied by this bio.   
Released on August 13th 1963, the debut album by the Dodos was a resounding success both critically and financially. Shooting straight to number one on the UK charts, it was the first of many number one albums. Considering the group consisted of very young men (the youngest at 16 and oldest at 20), the fact that the entire album was made up of self penned songs was truly extraordinary, and would inspire greatness from their contemporaries who until then had filled albums with filler and cover tracks. At this time, the music business was fuelled by singles, as most record buyers couldn't afford full albums, and most albums as said before were mainly full of filler surrounding hit singles. The Dodos began a trend in the English music scene to treat albums as something just as special as singles, and were the first UK band to record different versions of songs for their singles and albums. This was suggested by their producer Tolly Williford Gipson, and the boys loved the idea, and it became an industry standard later in the UK. Yet another example of the Dodos being innovators in music. The album was famously recorded in one feverish day, with a few overdubs done the following day. Recorded on a BTR-2 Reel To Reel tape machine, the rhythm track was recorded on one track with the vocals on the other. this allowed T.W.G. to bring vocals up or down in the mix, ensuring a clean vocal performance on every recoding.

Track listing

01 The World Wants To Know
02 Am I The Bad Guy
03 More Than You Know

04 Empty Spaces
05 I Know A Place
06 Listen To My Heart
07 I Want To Make You Mine
08 Smiles and Glancing Looks
09 I Saw Her Dancing There
10 Why Me
11 Love Me Now
12 Don't Leave Me Now