Smoke, fire and stained glass windows: Dora Jar explores her debut album, ‘No Way To Relax When You Are On Fire’
On September 13th, the genre-blending singer-songwriter Dora Jar released her debut album, No Way To Relax When You Are On Fire via Island Records.
Having recently toured alongside notable artists such as The 1975 and Billie Eilish, it is safe to say that Dora is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the indie-pop scene. After surpassing 600,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and releasing two EP’s, the time finally arrived for Dora Jar to release her debut album No Way To Relax When You’re On Fire.
Known by listeners for her imaginative persona, uniquely textured instrumentals and introspective lyricism, Dora’s latest project takes listeners on a vulnerable journey into her past and present selves.
In her Instagram announcement post, Dora confessed: “This album is a stained glass window, it is the creepy raven on your windowsill waiting for you to make eye contact and then when you do you realize it is very cute, it is the burn of regret from a cigarette, it is a falling petal at the mercy of the wind, it is my childhood fear of the devil, it is my adult eye roll to my fear, it is NO WAY TO RELAX WHEN YOU ARE ON FIRE!”
Shortly after its release, VoiceNoted was invited to a press conference led by °1824 to discover the madness behind the magic. So, we’ve collated the best of the Q&A to give fans an insight into the creation of the incredible album:
Your album is called No Way To Relax When You’re On Fire, and fire can carry both positive and negative meanings. What does it represent to you?
“I sometimes feel like I’m on fire and I’m full of action and I just keep going and can’t relax, like right now, and sometimes that feels really good and sometimes it’s very crazy.”
What is the significance of the album cover and what inspired the psychedelic background?
“Well, the cover is directly from a Marry Poppins scene where Marry Poppins takes her umbrella and pokes the black chimney smoke to create a staircase and they walk up it. That scene stuck out to me because, during the creation of this album, I was very obsessed with contradictions, in myself and smoke as a staircase is a big contradiction - something that lifts but is not grounded and you could fall right through. Smoke is also from fire, so that’s connected but I feel like the visuals are more a feeling than something I’ve put a lot of intellectual thought into.”
Your music and persona are both very colourful. What do you find inspiration in for your aesthetic, whether that be outfits, album covers or tour visuals?
“I like colours and I love old movies that have both cartoon and live action in them like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I like textures like paper and I like wearing paper, like the paper bag princess. For some of the visualisers of the album, I like potato sacks and I like Fantasia 2000.”
Photo by Haley Appell
At what point in the writing process did the visuals and aesthetic start to come through?
“In regards to the Mary Poppins visuals I said before, the sky seemed to come up a lot and I decided to use most of the visualisers in the floaty sky background. I had a lot of help from our stylist Kian and creative director/photographer Haley Appell. Basically, all I told Kian was that I wanted to wear paper and I wanted to wrap my boots into potato sacks. It all kind of happened in one day, we just had a little brainstorm because those things are on a tight schedule.”
What feeling did you want the aesthetic of the album to evoke in listeners?
“I’m someone who has very fast changing emotions: my inner weather is super temporal and watching the sky change is a source of comfort for me because it reminds me that everything will change. So, I guess just the ever changing nature of everything and then how I ask who I am a lot in these songs, and the real answer is ever-changing, which is another thing that the sky visuals evoke too.”
What would your advice be to someone who hears the album title and feels like they can relate to it?
“I’m trying to think of my younger self right now, because I definitely went through some turmoil, especially in my early 20’s. I think that the fire can sometimes feel like anger and that underneath anger is some kind of universal sadness that can help our hearts open, and ultimately we can get out of our own heads and connect with each other when we realise that we’re all struggling. My advice is to let the heart go through it’s natural course and lead you through whatever grief and sadness and let it show you something beautiful and be patient for that.”
You mentioned that the song writing process began two years ago while facing imposter syndrome and confronting your fears. Do you feel like you’ve finally overcome those fears and in what ways has this project allowed you to feel those feelings?
“I think there’s a lot of contradictions in being an artist, where you want to share so much and then you're afraid to be seen. I feel like the only thing I can do is music and sometimes I’ll feel very unsure of what it is that I'm even saying and it's hard to trust the mystery. So, I think I’m just getting more comfortable with the mystery and sharing from that place and not feeling the need to have it all making sense and put on a platter for people to easily understand. I think that my nature is a bit confusing and I feel confused a lot of the time, but I feel braver now, to share from that place.”
Your lyrics feel very literary - they’re descriptive, they have characters, they tell stories - are there any pieces of literature like books or poetry that have inspired your work?
“Definitely! One that comes to mind is a book that Julie Andrews wrote called ‘The Last of the Really Great Wangnoodles’, I don’t know if anyone has read it, it’s a children's book. It’s about a scientist who is studying DNA and the imagination and he finds three children to test this imagination machine on. They travel to an alternate dimension and confront these beings and that really opened me up to science and how imagination and science connect. I don’t really understand the laws of physics but, when I think about it, I feel like my imagination fills in the gaps and then I can be more open to learning things like string theory. That book really changed my life.”
In Debbie Darling and many other songs, you have very creative lyrics and metaphors, such as, “You look like a witch without a broomstick”. How do you come up with these creative lyrics and do you go to a certain place to write them?
“A lot of my inspiration comes from walking and seeing the world pass by. I think the lyric “You look like a witch without a broomstick” actually comes from these little metal pipes in New York City. I don’t know what they’re for, but they have the kind of pointy hat like witches and I just thought it was funny and so it found it’s way into a song. I like things that make me chuckle and I like mixing that in with something very sincere.”
How do you approach making music with such diverse interpretations and what do you want your listeners to get out of finding meaning in your songs?
“I think that the best part of music is there is infinite ways to feel one emotion and a certain chord can evoke so many different things in different people. That might be partly why I don’t write too many literal lyrics, I like leaving room for people to make their own connections and I love making my own connections from the music I love. Also, I don’t try to make sense, I outline images and sometimes that makes for a very direct story and sometimes it’s a little more abstract.”
You’ve mentioned before that you keep a dream journal, so are any of the songs on the new album an insight into your dreams?
“I haven’t been journaling so much about my dreams recently but I definitely have some crazy dreams sometimes. I did have an interesting dream while I was making the album, although it didn’t go into it. I had a dream we were all passing around a strawberry which was blasting techno music and kind of exploding.”
How do you choose which sounds to incorporate to enhance the emotional depth of your music and are there specific instruments or sounds that you feel particularly drawn to when creating a new track?
“Obviously, I love guitar and usually that leads every single song. Every song on the album started on guitar, whether or not it stayed on. I also love humming and purring and all sorts of things and it’s really just about whatever the moment calls for.”
Could you talk about your thought process when it came to arranging the guitar parts in songs such as Ragdoll and Canonball?
“Yes! It’s kind of like a video game where you keep dying and then you realise how to do the jump and you just keep doing it over and over again until you pass the level. I like finding guitar parts that are interesting to me. I don’t usually write a song to the first chord progression: I play when I sit down and I like it to be a little bit of a challenge.
With Ragdoll, for example, I was sitting on my couch when I found the melody. I was playing it so slowly, but I was obsessed and I just kept playing it. I would wake up early in the morning to play it and then eventually I could do it without messing up, so I wrote a melody over it. I just want to find something that feels like a fun challenge and I’m still getting better at playing it live - it’s still not perfect but that’s kind of exciting”.
When putting together the tracklist, what was the process of organising the songs into a cohesive album?
“I think from the start of making music and building projects, I’ve thought about it like a funhouse, where I want every room to be radically different but all part of the same house. That helps it feel exciting for me to play live and also gives me challenges with filling in blank spaces when I’m writing. When making the tracklist, it was more about elimination than ordering, I spent weeks trying to move songs to the most cohesive places.”
How would you like your fans to feel when they listen to the album?
“I would like anyone who listens to feel courageous and open and dancey and like the strange parts of them are the best parts!”
Being on your Behind the Curtain Tour, what has it been like to play your new tracks in front of an audience and how have your shows evolved since the start of your career to now?
“It’s so fun playing live and I wish I could do it all the time. I feel I’m getting more energetic and even on this tour, we’re like seven shows in, and the shows changed so much the more we get to do it. It’s all about just being in the moment and letting the audience lead us to new, exciting places.”
Has there been a particular live moment or interaction that stands out to you as especially meaningful?
“I need to think about that! I feel like every night there’s something different and I just love having shows this size where I feel like I can see everyone's face and really be there watching people feel every song. I really like looking out at the crowd during Debby Darling when people are really giving so much of their hearts back. Also, saying hi after the show is so fun.”
You mentioned that your sister, Louisa, had cerebral palsy and you both got so much joy from discovering new artists together. Since she was the person who made you realise how important accessibility at concerts is, how are you making your shows accessible to your fans?
“Well, there’s always people making sure that there's seating areas and just the other night in Chicago, there was an adorable girl who was in a walker and she was right up front. I think raising awareness helps the fans know that if they see someone who has special needs, they should make way for them to have the best experience possible to make sure everyone has that same value when you’re all in it together. I was also really inspired by Disneyland's accessibility and how much they prioritised my sister's needs. We got to skip the line and she loved rollercoasters much more than I did, so that was very meaningful.”
Is there anything that you learned from opening for prominent acts such as Billie Eilish and The 1975 that you’ve incorporated into your own performances?
“That my music is really fun to play in huge places and I can’t wait to sell out giant venues one day!”
Dora has since concluded her North American tour, but we hope it won’t be long until she announces more upcoming performances! In the meantime, you can follow her on Instagram to keep updated and you can find the rest of her discography on Spotify below: