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- May 23, 2022
Dorothy Sets Fire With New Album ‘Gifts from the Holy Ghost’
Rock band Dorothy, led by singer Dorothy Martin, recently released its fourth full-length album, Gifts from the Holy Ghost on Roc Nation Records late last month. The album’s title stems from Dorothy’s frenzied tour-bus experience three years ago, where Martin’s then-guitar technician overdosed and subsequently died in his bunk, in the middle of the night. Amidst the chaos, she acted on instinct and began to pray for him to come out of it. And, by some miraculous intervention, his life was restored, and the singer was overcome with a profound spiritual awakening and overwhelming inspiration that would eventually make up much of the album’s visceral design. The opening tracking track, “A Beautiful Life” paints a vividly personal account of mortality, spirit and brushes with life and death.
“’A Beautiful Life’ includes my favorite lyric on the album,” reveals Martin. “’ Don’t let the demons get you down’ — The story of the song is very personal to me and touches on suicide and near-death experience. It is, to me, the most spiritual and inspiring track on the album.”
The first two singles from the album — “Rest In Peace” and “Black Sheep” — rocketed into Top 15 at Active Rock Radio charts by the end of April and received more than 8 million streams worldwide. Other acknowledgements and awards include an “essential listening” recognition from Loudwire, Consequence, Blabbermouth, Metal Injection, New Noise and several others. Not to mention a blown-up image on YouTube’s Nashville Billboard and Facebook’s Artist of the Day.
Gifts from the Holy Ghost also serves as a recollection of Martin’s past struggles with drugs and alcohol as well as her ascension to sobriety and spiritual awakening. She illustrates what she believes to be her personal explication of the record in a recent interview with Consequence, where she states,
“The way I have interpreted it myself — and everyone is free to interpret it any way they want — but it sounds like a breakup song to me,” Martin explains. “It sounds like someone talking about a relationship. But, for me, being an artist in recovery, it also felt [like] it was a F-you letter to my alcoholism. It’s like, I’m done with this battle and dark season and struggle and am going to bury it in the ground and grow and become stronger for it.”
Martin, the Hungarian-born artist, is anything but ordinary when it comes to her writing process. Not only does she collaborate with an abundance of fellow musicians, her rather eclectic catalogue of artistic influences — including Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith — is as sundry as one would expect given the variance in Dorothy’s picturesque sound. Gifts from the Holy Ghost features an assemblance of artists that couldn’t have been more carefully selected. The commendable list includes famed musicians with the likes of Keith Wallen (Breaking Benjamin), Jason Hook (Five Finger Death Punch), Phil X (guitarist for Bon Jovi), Scott Stevens (songwriter/producer), Trevor Lukather (ZFG), Joel Hamilton (acclaimed producer) and the ever-popular audio engineer, Chris Lord-Alge.
And as the result of this diverse concoction of musically intelligent minds is everything that you might expect: a 37-minute, high-voltage and guitar heavy release that combines all of the elements of Martin’s influential catalogue. Gifts is an in-your-face compilation that knows no limitations. It flirts with every genre from California desert rock (Kyuss/Queens of the Stone Age, we’re looking at you) to old Buckcherry-styled thrash-rock and as hard as it may be to believe, a subtle hint of Florence Welch deep within Martin’s elegant vocals.
“I wanted it to just have teeth and more bite to it because I felt like that was true to who I am,” Martin recounts in a recent interview with Loudwire. “I was always open to suggestions and experimenting, hence 28 Days in the Valley (Dorothy’s sophomore release). But I was like ‘You know it’s just time for me to really lean into what I enjoy.’ And that’s what I did.”
Ultimately, Gifts from the Holy Ghost is somewhat of an anthem for Martin, and for anyone who dares to explore the inner depths of their mind and find out what it means to them. It’s about breaking free, leaving personal demons in the dust and to stay on an even keel, maintaining power and balance along the way.
Martin’s favorite lyric from the entire album is featured on the very first track, and goes, “Don’t let the demons get you down,” a simple yet beautifully meaningful mantra.
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