The disc’s final pair of originals are (rather unfairly, I think) tucked away between the covers (so to speak), in the latter stages of the disc. And Cold Waves, an album standout for sure, is written from within depression (and to my mind strongly recalls Roy Orbison along the way). Lovers On The Run is another song that carries the theme of being left behind, again spending time writing letters never read. Yes, you can feel the ache in her voice as she puts this feeling across – but it’s a simple expression, and not in the least bit theatrical or mover-emoted. But I’d still say that melancholy is Dori’s strongest suit, for the album title alone is really thoughtful and poignant (she says that it comes from the idea of “writing songs about people in your past and maybe them never knowing that it’s about them…kind of like a letter never being read”).
The overall tone of this latest, more relaxed collection, Dori cheerfully admits, is rosier than her debut (“I always want to put out something that’s a genuine representation of what I was going through at that point in my life”) apparently, getting married last year to fellow-musician Nick Falk (who plays drums and banjo on the album) made writing love songs much easier – and of course, she’s happier now in general. Follow that! We all cried…įast forward barely a year, and here’s Dori proudly releasing the follow-up, Letters Never Read, which presents a further ten helpings of her stunning singing voice, this time showcased on six new originals and four covers.
Dori’s debut album was widely acclaimed, and she was quite extravagantly hailed as “the new voice of Appalachia”. Dori’s own songs were impressive too, dealing unaffectedly and directly (and instinctively) with emotional matters, and showing a keen grasp of musical idioms and folk and country genre role-models (well, she did grow up exposed to the music of such artists as Doc Watson and The Louvin Brothers). Things moved fast, for within a very short couple of years she released an astonishingly assured debut album, with Teddy himself in the producer’s chair and singing close harmonies with Dori on three tracks. And incredibly, three days later he wrote back. Dori Freeman’s back-story reads like a dream or a fairytale – you’ll have learnt via this site that just a very few years ago she was a single mother working in her family’s frame shop in her hometown of Galax, Virginia when she reached out to Teddy Thompson via Facebook and sent him a video of her singing a song along with a note saying how much she would like to sing with him.
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