For Dora Jar, there’s no way to relax as her career is an accelerating state of motion—that impression was immediately clear when I was chatting with her via Zoom on a recent press conference hosted by °1824. We caught her in tour mode, driving down a barren freeway between cities while simultaneously taking the time to answer our questions via her friend’s phone. It was an unexpected peek into the fast-paced demands of touring as a rising pop artist where multitasking and juggling different responsibilities has become the norm in the music business. But like her music, she commits to our meeting with such good-humored focus and a bouncy energy that it has further endeared me to the notion that her music is a just natural extension of her authentic real-life self. Her debut album, No Way to Relax When You Are On Fire, perfectly encapsulates her unique musical worldview. There is a sense of endearing child-like wonder in her arrangements and quirky vocal mannerisms—quite simply, the energy and atmosphere she imbue are magical! Here, she boldly breaks out of her bedroom pop roots and truly delivers an eclectic mix of exhilarating soundscapes and instrumentations but with an outpour of playful pop/punk energy that recall equal parts Kate Bush, Bjork, and No Doubt, but with Dora’s own weird modern twists.
For Dora, her influences are diverse. And they run deep and extend beyond music and into classic cinema and literature. The dramatical underpinnings of her album and theatrical bent in her live shows are a respectful nod to those elements that make up her imaginative world. Her music possesses such a rich larger-than-life vitality to it that makes the listening experience feel like straight out of an old movie. In Ragdoll, she sings, “come and get it, make me lose control, throw me like a ragdoll”—which features her trademark unique whimsical vocal delivery as she sings a deeply important subject to her about personal freedom and agency. Both Ragdoll and Cannonball feature some beautiful guitar arrangements that immediately caught my attention. When I asked Dora about her approach to guitar and musical thought process, she noted that she’s doesn’t really know much music theory and works out her guitar arrangements slowly piece by piece by ear until it starts to feel right and matches the harmony she hears inside her head. There’s a unique otherworldly quality to how she stitches and orchestrates her arrangements together, yet each component can feel like they can melodically stand on their own. “I like finding guitar parts that are interesting to me. And I like to be a little bit of a challenge. For Ragdoll, I was sitting and noodling around on the couch, and I found the melody and I was playing it so slowly, but I was obsessed with it. And I just kept playing it. I would wake up one morning and keep playing it until eventually I can play without messing up, and then I would write a melody over it. Basically, I just want to find something that feels like a fun challenge. I’m still getting better at playing it live. It’s still not perfect, but that’s kind of exciting to me.”
If Dora ever released a collection of instrumental tracks of her songs, it would be the rage among art rock devotees. The title track, No Way to Relax When You Are On Fire, contains all the elements that make her such a beloved pop artist. And the idea of being “on fire” is such a fascinatingly loaded concept—her young audiences can immediately associate it to the common online slang of “being on a roll.” However, Dora explained that “fire” can be conceptualized in both good and bad ways, and it fits in with the album’s larger emotional concepts about self-discovery, being vulnerable, dealing with one’s personal anxieties and insecurities, and finding the courage to power through. But of course, with all the melodic heights the album takes us through as well as her own personal career trajectory, being “on fire” is appropriately on the nose. With this album, Dora has ignited a fiery spirit, and we can confidently predict that her music career will continue to burn brightly for a long time.
- Carlo De Dios
