Arrive Without Travelling

{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2025}}

{{Infobox album

| name = Arrive Without Travelling

| type = Album

| artist = the Three O'Clock

| cover = Arrive Without Travelling.jpg

| alt =

| released = 1985

| recorded =

| studio =

| genre = Alternative rock, paisley underground

| length =

| label = I.R.S. Records

| producer = Mike Hedges

| prev_title = Sixteen Tambourines

| prev_year = 1983

| next_title = Ever After

| next_year = 1986

}}

Arrive Without Travelling, released in 1985, is the second album by the Three O'Clock, and their I.R.S. Records debut. The title was taken from a line from "The Inner Light", a song by George Harrison, which in turn derived the phrase from verse 47 of the Tao Te Ching, a Chinese classic text.{{cite book |last=Lavezzoli |first=Peter |title=The Dawn of Indian Music in the West |url={{GBurl|id=OSZKCXtx-wEC|p=184}} |year=2006 |publisher=A&C Black |isbn=978-0-8264-1815-9 |page=184}}

Noting that "psychedelia has begun to creep into the mainstream," Spin hailed lead singer Michael Quercio's "superb vocals" and "Mike Mariano's churchy keyboards," adding, "This group is definitely into making pure pop. Call it wimpy, unpretentious, joyous, retrograde, groovy, or uplifting, The Three O'Clock's music is going somewhere."{{cite journal|last=Matteo|first=Steve|title=The Three O'Clock: Arrive Without Traveling|journal=Spin|date=Nov 1985|volume=1|issue=7|page=30|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hLVXggxBmFkC&pg=PA30}}

Reviewing a Chicago appearance on the band's tour for the album, Billboard acclaimed Michael Quercio as "an able craftsman of the pop hook," citing the band's "genially hallucinogenic ditties" and "a solid pop approach [that] keeps it from being classified solely as a "paisley underground" artifact."{{cite magazine|last=McCormick|first=Moira|title=Talent in Action: The Three O'Clock|magazine=Billboard|date=Jun 15, 1985|volume=97|issue=24|page=48|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-SQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT48}}

The album was re-released on CD in 2002 on the Collectors' Choice label, paired on a single CD release with Ever After.

Arrive Without Travelling was later critically acclaimed as one of the "Top 200 power pop albums of all time," crediting Michael Quercio for "some of his sweetest melodies here, including the jaunty 'Half the Way There,' 'Another World' and the Scott Miller co-write 'The Girl with the Guitar (Says Oh Yeah).'"{{cite book |last=Borack |first=John M. |title=Shake Some Action: The Ultimate Power Pop Guide |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pqtGTJgE4rEC&pg=PA113 |page=113 |access-date=November 26, 2012 |year=2007 |publisher=Not Lame Recordings |isbn=978-0979771408 }}

The title of the song "The Girl with the Guitar" was inspired by Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles, and alluded to a Jan Vermeer painting, The Guitar Player (1672).{{cite web |author1=Toren, Robert |author2=Quercio, Michael |author3=Ray, Gil |author4=Thayer, Donnette |title=Three O'Clock: The Girl with the Guitar |work=Game Theory, Loud Family, and Scott Miller |type=group comments |publisher=Facebook |date=Dec 30, 2013 – Jan 2, 2014 |url=https://www.facebook.com/groups/55028186370/permalink/10151766290041371/ }} The lyrics also include a reference to painter Henri Rousseau. Miller's version of the song, titled "Girl w/ a Guitar," appears as a bonus track on the 2014 CD reissue of Game Theory's 1985 album Real Nighttime.