Wanna know how you can tell that RØRY knows what she’s doing with this whole music thing? She knows how to fit wherever there’s space. Despite her last couple of years of visibility, she isn’t a new presence in the industry by any means, boasting a multifaceted career spanning comfortably over a decade. She began in acoustic pop in 2011; she then moved towards being a songwriter on a number of a real hits, and a vocal plugin for a load of Eurotrance DJs no one’s ever heard of. The current nu-gen development is an exceptionally recent one, only really since 2022. But when you’ve got the experience and savvy to scout out burgeoning trends and squeeze your way into them, why wouldn’t you take the opportunity?
Of course, that’s not the entire picture. There’s also the matter of RØRY being a talented artist in her own right. It helps that she’s pitted against a scene that effectively amounts to screaming influencers in goth cosplay, so the waterline for ability isn’t too high. That also doesn’t not influence the perception of RØRY, when one of her big boons is how she’s not so inescapably embroiled in cringe arrested development. But that, too, sort of matters in a general vacuum. The thing that’s so highly publicised about RØRY is how she’s a fair bit older than her contemporaries; she’s 40 upon the release of this album. Rather than sidelining that fact to maintain some scene-standard visage, Restoration sees a full embrace of RØRY’s experience—in the industry and, in general, life—to its enormous benefit.
It’s far more personal, for a start, and actually feels that way. As opposed to another trite collection of depressive stereotypes achieving little more than just sitting there, Restoration comes from a place of intent. Here, RØRY’s history of addiction and substance abuse is relayed with the quality of someone who’s evidently been a professional songwriter for a number of years. One Drink Away is the main one, where even as RØRY grows and finds stability in her life, she still acknowledges how easy it is to slip back into bad habits. For a change, it’s an adult perspective on a subject that, in this corner of alternative music, is rarely afforded that weight. Sorry I’m Late is the other big one in that regard, as RØRY addresses a turbulent earlier life stalling a career that’s only picking up again now, against arbitrary deadlines for success or the assertions of being ‘too old’.
Honestly, it can’t be expressed how refreshing it is in this sphere to have a mature songwriting voice, even if the actual tone of said voice…isn’t. It’s here where RØRY feels the most hit-or-miss, and where the aforementioned danger of falling back into dire straits returns in the form of the standard nu-gen kit. The tight, waifish voice can already be a hard sell, reliant as it is on beefier instrumentals it carry it a good portion of the way on In The Bible and Wolves. It’s worse on If Pain Could Talk, What Would It Say?, though—the rote edge of RØRY voicing her own taunting vices is a bad start, made worse by the switch into a more bullish, aggressive delivery that sounds as if it’s coming from an actual kid. At least when Hold On factors in rapping, it’s tonally constant, the only errant elbows to the ribs coming from an inability to decide between an English or an American accent.
It’s frankly a kindness that these are the exceptions and can exist without dragging RØRY to the uninspiring abyss of her peers. ‘Restoration’ as a title really does relate to every field of what’s contained within, including the music itself, in a rare change of pace. For the most part, clunks and grinds and knowingly bad production to feign ‘punk’ cred are out of the equation; instead, what’s here is actually listenable. It’s nice to get some big hard rock tableaux as a dominant force, going as far as a blatant but not unwelcome homage to The Cranberries’ Zombie on Wolves, from the cadence to the flow to even the vocal timbre. Tilting into a more austere cold for In The Bible and a soft grunge blur on Sherlock Holmes makes for a nice sprinkle of flexibility among that. In fact, even with valid critiques of it being a little smeared and affording of some extra might, there’s enough central appeal in this sound just being here to justify it. Morality $uicide is a strange inclusion—an anti-war tangent on an album about personal redemption and growth—but it sounds grand and cinematic, so why complain?
Even when stripped down to softer acoustics on One Drink Away, or repurposed for bubblier pop-rock on Sorry I’m Late, there’s not a cynicism to RØRY’s work. In the vicinity of a trend, it’s not there through slavish devotion, or nailed to an inability to have its own ideas. It’s not even a comfortable medium, for the most part; it just works, plain and simple. In the right light, Restoration can indeed have the portentousness that its title wants to engender, an artistic rebirth that’s necessarily lived-in. It might even be a high point of RØRY’s career, honestly, or at least the stage in her years-long climb up the industry ladder that’s paying the most satisfying dividends. And when it’s coming from a scene that frequently offers anything but, that does mean something.
For fans of: As December Falls, Cassyette, Diamante
‘Restoration’ by RØRY is released on 31st January on SADCØRE Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
