A Little Messed Up

VINYL FORMAT. A lot can happen over the course of a decade, and the past ten years have been no exception. Los Angeles-based pop-punk trio The Dollyrots know this all too well, having formed in Sarasota, FL as a teenage punk rock band in 2000. Although the nation has seen immense changes in that time span, on the musical front audiences still want their music to rock, and The Dollyrots are delivering the goods, with oodles more experience. The Dollyrots present their third full-length album, entitled A Little Messed Up, on Blackheart Records. The Dollyrots aren't fresh out of the garage. If there's one thing that experience can offer, it's learning from past missteps and building on the successes.And that's where the album title A Little Messed Up comes into play. It points to the idea that imperfections are all around and a natural part of human existence. The Dollyrots opted to share their songwriting process on a handful of songs with outside writers and work with a number of other well-known producers, including Matt Wallace (Replacements, Faith No More), Evan Frankfort (The Distillers, The Bangles), Fred Archambault (Avenged Sevenfold), and Sylvia Massy (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool) mixing. While this sort of writing/recording process is more common in pop music settings, the trio found themselves treading some fairly new ground, ultimately discovering this methodology to be both productive and gratifying. The end result is a collection of tracks that contains the expected melodic sensibilities of The Dollyrots ("California Beach Boy" and "Rollercoaster"), coupled with a decidedly unexpected edge that's not heard on the band's previous material. And after a decade, The Dollyrots have earned a license for change, something that they've judiciously exercised, while taking caution in not sacrificing their trademark power-pop laced anthems that fans have loved and come to expect. And it's that careful maintenance of both style and stance in the music scene that Ogden and company have always respected and admired in others.