Psychedelic rock & roll is here to stay – it's turning heads from Los Angeles to London, and even Prince has been tunneling backward to the mindbending sound of the lysergic Sixties. Among the leaders of the pack are the Three O'Clock, who look and sound like the Monkees and the Left Banke rolled up into one big paisley-pop package. Theirs are not the can't-find-my-mind acid agonies of the Blue Cheer and Hendrix axis, but rather the happy, helium-timbre choristering of Flower Power advocates high on groovy colors and good vibes.

Arrive without Travelling suggests, by its very title, that hallucinogens may make a comeback as a new mental mass-transit system. Certainly, the grooves within are saturated with music so sweetly bent that ordinary reality alone could not have inspired them. "Her Head's Revolving" starts out eight miles high and goes up from there, as distorted guitar riffs and fey harmonies mount around the syncopated 4/4 slam of the drums to a crescendoing frenzy not heard on record since the Yardbirds' "I'm Not Talking." "Knowing When You Smile," "Half the Way There" and "Another World" are equally wonderful, made up of gossamer vocal textures, a crisp, martial rhythmic attack and keyboard-laced pop melodies played with almost classical precision.

Some of the material borders on the predictable ("Simon in the Park," which bows to the East) or the precious ("Mrs. Green," an oversweet confection), and the music on Arrive without Travelling is more tributary than original. But when the Three O'Clock comes up with "Spun Gold," a song as magnificent as, say, the Left Banke's great lost single "Desiree," one can only be grateful for music like this in the Eighties. (RS 452-453)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH