oh dorian on purevolume™

Indie / Folk Rock / Other

oh dorian is my musical vehicle. carrying me through... well, everything. hopefully, enabling me to articulate emotions and experiences we all encounter from time to time and allowing me to deliver them through raw, passionate music.

oh dorian: the bio

Shes a woman and she plays music and when she sings you know shes had some rough patches. (Some might think shes terribly depressed and then feel the spontaneous, springing need to bring her flowers.) And well, putting those things down on paper seems to automatically signal the places youd want to confine oh dorianlike, say, Lilith Fair or opening for Tori Amos. Butand sorry for the clichd defense here buther music is bigger than that. Its more, deserves more.

Should the knee-jerk reaction to slide her into some comfortable genre subside (or be sidestepped completely), oh dorian islike the best of artistssimply a cartographer mapping out routes in the wilderness of our biggest hurts, the dark spaces where were most vulnerable. Instead of being crafty, tossing off clever lyrics here and there, oh dorian strings you along some scenic path before turning on you with a knife. But only because she cares. There is in every song a moment when the words, the music, that voice cuts to the quick, makes you bleed. Sometimes silently, sometimes with slight, shivering whimpers. Shell get in there if you let her, and the thing is, you need that. Its like therapy in three- or four-minute clips.

oh dorian hails from Macon and lives there too. Her Myspace page says she lives in Atlanta as well, or is somehow based there, and really it doesnt matter where she lives because she has no home. The things she sings of, the way she sings themit isnt timeless, its placeless, a reflection of the fact shes searching for somewhere to belong. The world is much bigger than it used to be and everywhere seems to come across, at first glance, like anywhere else. It isnt hard to get lost, especially when youre a 22-year-old who thinks and feels too much.

So yeah, some people think too much and feel too much, and they grow up in the world a little faster, a little deeper, because of that. And because of that, oh dorian goes further into feelings, giving other people something to call whatever it is on their bothered mind. Shes searching out something everyone wants: the safety and security of a home. It sounds lonely, desperateand it isbut thinking and feeling too much cuts two ways. It is more than just misery.

Listen to her between songs, catch her in a candid moment away from the stage, and she seems like a different person. More than just approachable, shes an elated little minx. At times, shes frighteningly ecstatic. That short, somewhat mousy girl will, without warning or concern for the safety of others, just blow up in laughter, sending heavy shockwaves out all around her when something really gets her going. Honestly, its quite disconcerting. Furthermore, its that hidden thing in her music, the invisible foundation for everything shes doing. Her strength isnt in the depth of sadness or isolation she feels, but in the duality she exhibits between the poles of abject joy and pain. One doesnt exist without the other, and it seems obvious that she has had powerful doses of both regardless of how shes chosen to convey it.

In Something About Snow, to no one in particular and everyone at the same time, she sings: Should you change/Your mind/You know where to find me/Should you change/Your mind/You know where Ill be/Right where you left meWeve crawled this far/To creep a little more/But if you stay away/Im sure itll be okay/At least thats what Im supposed to sayId rather it not unfold that way/Id rather but it doesnt matter what I say.

But it does, of course. The ache she sorts through is so familiar. It teeters on the edge of what we want and what we have, and it doesnt give a good goddamn about what we need. Its the stuff weve stuffed down, ignored and denied. Sometimes, its whats going on right at that moment. And either way, oh dorian isnt afraid of what were afraid ofat least not so afraid that she wont speak that evils name. She is Heather Kemp, a person willing to be oh dorian so the rest of us wont have to do it alone.

-Chris Horne

"... Her crystalline voice sparkles over spare piano and acoustic melodies with a range and vulnerability that recalls an early Tori Amos. That comparison is too simplistic because her sound is fresh and shows influences as vast as Radiohead, Bright Eyes, and Death Cab for Cutie..." -the 11th Hour