By Lio Capellaro

It’s a Tuesday night at Neumos Seattle, where Dora Jar is playing on her 2024 west coast tour. My friends and I enter the semi-packed venue, and face a sea of fairy queens and witches and wood nymphs that make up the crowd. Glitter faces, lace, neon hair clips are everywhere we look. The opening band who begin the show are The Army, The Navy. A duo of singer-songwriter best friends (who released their very first record this year). They play a breathtaking set of songs, mainly acoustic guitar and vocals. They created such beautiful harmonies together, their complimenting voices singing of love and heartbreak and self-empowerment. After the opener’s set, Dora Jar finally emerges. She stands on the edge of the stage with a white spotlight shone on her as she begins to do her ‘show makeup’, pursing her lips and gazing across the audience like a mirror with a wistful look on her face, all with the Mary Poppins theme playing in the background. When the song fades out, the lights come up bathing everything in color, revealing the rest of the band, and the magic begins…

The music of Dora Jar is not so easily defined in a word. Her music mixes finger-style folk influences, singer-songwriter vibes, and pop sensibilities, with a hard-core edge. It’s able to straddle a rustic, homegrown style, with a modern sound and production. What’s magical about her songs is the guitar hooks she creates, often with an alternate tuning, that paint such a rich space for the song to take place. It feels like you’re instantly being whisked off over the cascades. Her songs are a perfect mix of that folky acoustic sound rooting the song, and overdriven fuzzy guitars which lets a hardcore rock sound bleed into the song. It all works to support the power of her voice, which is the main focal point. It’s angelic, velvety, sleepy, yet assertive; she tells stories and incorporates metaphors, sings of heartbreak, love, growth, mystery… Her voice can be soft and trilling, or long and reach out, extending forever, beckoning us to listen closer, and follow down the rabbit hole.

Raised in Northern California, Dora Jar began releasing music around 2021. Since her first EP ‘Digital Meadow’, she’s been on an upward trajectory, opening for artists like Billie Eilish, the Neighbourhood, and the 1975. She’s also collaborated with a number of notable bedroom pop producers. And while she’s a veteran to the tour circuit, playing festivals and small venues alike, this year’s tour is special for her, supporting the release of her debut LP, “No way to relax when you are on fire” which was released September 13th.

Dora Jar’s music shares similarities with the sound & style of St Vincent, Haley Heynderickx, Odie Leigh, and even Beach House to name a few. Her lyrics feature nature imagery, the mystical, magical, and chock full of witty metaphors beyond that of your average pop record. At Neumos under the limelights, she plays a mix of older songs from her first and most popular EP, and new ones from her most recent release. She largely stays true to the tracks’ structure but sometimes goes off the rails in a really wonderful, spontaneous way, letting the audience
be involved in this experience, not just witnessing it. She turns the microphone to two girls who know her song word for word, and to all of us as we sing the words back, and mimic her harmonies. She shares the energy with her band too, letting them have free reign to solo and vamp or just jump around with her. It’s a collective process, of going off each other; her band members are all individual players, not just background contributors, they each have their time in the sun, riffing and goofing around, grinning ear to ear at each other while the lights switch blue-green-pink-red.

The songs come out like cascades, one flowing into the next. Dora pulls the audience in with her vibrant energy, and electric stage presence. She has the power to turn the whole house upside-down, and makes the space alive. On stage, she’s alive with energy jumping from one side of the stage to the next, immersed in the song, and just vibing out with her friends who share the stage with her. What’s so captivating about Dora Jar is her appreciation for the nonsensical, her “Stop Making Sense” vibe (think David Byrne- Life during wartime). She has a childish energy, an infectious goofiness, but an unquestioned seriousness, depth, and passion she holds for the music. As the show nears towards the end, with her guitarist taking a long solo, she jumps from the stage into the crowd and moshes with us. We sing at the top of our lungs, and jump so hard the floor feels like it will surely break as the wood floor bends beneath us. She gets handmade gifts from fans, holds peoples hands, exchanges witty remarks and talks to us about Seattle neighborhoods. She’s so different than most performers, she loves to have a connection and interaction with the audience, singing with us. There’s a reciprocal quality to her stage presence/performance, seeing us as people not just a crowd.

She even uses the help of the audience to recreate the rich harmonies featured on her albums, at one point has us all harmonizing together like an enchanted, singing army of elves (song: Quiver). Other songs have punkier elements that bleed into the track, blending her smooth angelic vocals with fuzzy guitars; like on her hit “Multiply” where the ending breaks from the beautiful arpeggiated riff and slow tempo, turning hardcore, and it’s impossible not to head-bash. The night left me dazzled by the mind melting abilities of voice— Dora Jar and The Army, The Navy both took us on a journey to a different realm, one alive with fae beings, wizards, and woodland creatures. Flipping her blond air around as she jumps sky high, Dora seems in a trance at times. Weaving her arms into shapes, summoning a god, or becoming a mythic being for a moment. The spontaneous quality she conveys through her performance is so alluring, magical, and makes the night so exciting, which is part of the magic of her music. When a performer has a knack for spontaneity, it makes each show so special and personal. What I, and many, love about Dora Jar is her fearless confidence, and embrace of her oddballness and whimsicalness. There’s a mysterious air about her, where you can never tell where she’s going to take the moment next, as she sings with a twinkle in her eye, “I’m not a little girl I’m a wizard.”