ALBUM REVIEW: Dorothy – ‘The Way’

The Way might not be Dorothy’s worst album, but it is their least gratifying. Apologies for skipping the foreplay on this one, but it’s kind of necessary, seeing as when you start noticing that fact, you really don’t stop.

It’s an oddity coming from Dorothy, a retro-rock band who’ve made the inconceivable breakthrough of being able to do more than one thing, much to the contrary of their sonic neighbours who’ve immovably nailed their single colour to the mast. They yawned into life (appropriately) with the riff-rock snoozer ROCKISDEAD; they grew into commendable Led Zeppelin impressionists on 28 Days In The Valley; and found a new lease on life as hard rock all-rounders on Gifts From The Holy Ghost. That album’s tone was an expectedly comfortable one for them—not quite as lodged in contemporaneity as Halestorm, though not outright applicable for carbon-dating, either. The Way, then, sticks to that feel while stepping into southern- and country-rock, the latest destination pointed out by their free-roaming arrow. So why, of everything they’ve done so far, does this feel the most like work for them?

Well, probably because it is. Dorothy at their best had a freewheeling, looser sensibility that did a lot for their natural sizzle. Conversely, The Way is such a tensed and overblown listen, representative of the mainstream hard rock that Dorothy desperately want to break into. If Gifts From The Holy Ghost was a promising glimpse at what that could look like, The Way is the overshoot, past the comfortable medium and landing far from where Dorothy’s established strengths lie. In those particular hinterlands, they’ve found themselves liberally cribbing from other acts just for sustenance. The Devil I Know plays exactly like one of Alter Bridge’s more conservative cuts; later, the air of The Pretty Reckless clings onto Bones to a frankly inescapable degree.

It’s Mud On Ya that proves the most memorable of Dorothy’s take-offs, though in the worst way by an absolute landslide. Here, the mere pitch of a Halestorm riff isn’t enough; they’ve got to really dig into the weeds and inhabit the most unpleasantly out-of-character vision possible. So from this band best known for blues-rock, you get trap fragments, flabby drums, a swampy, stumbling pace that does no favours to some badly flattened guitars, and vocal production that’s already tinny and overworked without the screams. Might as well chuck In This Moment on the pyre of parodies, because the final pre-chorus throws in a swatch of their stripe of metalcore congruent to literally nothing.

Perhaps it’s a thornier indictment at the state of radio-rock that Dorothy are trying to penetrate on The Way, because with every new piece they lay down, they’re going about things the right way. None of this is out of the ordinary for this space, and for as much as their past personality has been tossed asunder for it, Dorothy aren’t bad at getting results. Hell, Putting Out The Fire is an easy-breezy AM-rock cut that’s only a Jelly Roll remix away from being a crossover country / rock smash. It’s all just a little pat and obvious rather than outright bad, as songs like Bones and Unholy Water prove to be unobjectionable pivots as designed. Even Mud On Ya, the horrid, clumped-together mess that it is, is too competently structured to lash out as an outright disaster. At least Tombstone Town has a bit more in its locker, where the stim-pack of Slash’s involvement might be another symptom of radio-rock consolidation coming for Dorothy hard, but you can actually see the teeth and claws coming out on a country-rock barn-burner like this.

It’s one of the few bastions of an older rock ‘n’ roll mentality that The Way bears, not overtaken by a meticulousness that really subtracts a lot from Dorothy. And yes, that does include Dorothy Martin herself. In terms of overall presence, she still deserves to have her name adorning this group, with the earth-shaking tone often expected of classic rock’s women. But even she’s not immune to The Way’s overworking, and the firebrand soul of past releases is all but snuffed out, with only the barest outline in its place. It’s evident from the very first song I Come Alive, as over a minute is dedicated to Martin flexing her range and vocalisations uninterrupted, but it’s hard to see a fluidity or freedom there. Ideally, there’d be some warmth to help…anywhere.

Instead, lip service is paid to a ‘Southern gothic’ veneer that, to say arrives in fits and starts, would be giving far too much credit. More than anything, it’s a prop to make the usual classic rock bits and pieces look more interesting from the outside. Get inside, however, and you’ll find the usual imagery of fire and demons and getting baptised in the river, and all of that is too knotted up in the genre-appropriate morass to feel impactful. At least there’s the yearned-for flicker of humanity in the religious element, inspired by Martin’s born-again Christianity. It might be heaped onto Super Human but the greater reach is appreciated, if nothing else.

Or perhaps its just circles back to that first point about gratification. On other albums, including from Dorothy themselves, anything like that would be taken as a given; here, it’s a little mound of ash moulded into a prize before it inevitably blows away. Doesn’t sound that impressive, does it? When it’s built on an album that so clearly feels intended as its creators’ biggest yet, it doesn’t multiple times over. And yet, The Way just keeps trucking along, ignorant to that. It’s like a cyborg version of Dorothy, augmented for maximum efficiency where any danger of too much human presence is swiftly cut down before it gets out of hand. And to be perfectly honest, it’s hard to find much enjoyment from that, regardless of if the music has objectivity on its side. Even if Dorothy were never primed to take the gold, they were a fun band to have around in a scene that’s critically short on those. On The Way, they might as well have fallen off an assembly line.

For fans of: Halestorm, The Pretty Reckless, Black Stone Cherry

‘The Way’ by Dorothy is out now on Roc Nation.

Words by Luke Nuttall