Send "Runaway Dorothy " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Absolutepunk |
 Who?Runaway Dorothy is the nom-de-plume of North Carolina native Dave Parnell. He now resides in New York City. The Arc is his debut album. Runaway Dorothy got a boost earlier this year when Adam Duritz publicly announced that The Arc was one of his favorite albums of the last couple years, causing Astor Music Group to re-release the album. How is it? Tremendous. Don't expect bells and whistles here, Parnell is uninterested in that. This is simple heartland rock a la Ryan Adams, Jakob Dylan, Duritz and Petty. Album opener "Caulfield," is rustic and plaintive as Parnelel waxes in his clear spoken voice about falling asleep drunk on a train, blocking out sunlight and sleeping all day and finding little reason to live. Downtrodden stuff for certain, but not without its collective charms. A full band is introduced on the steel guitar influenced "Where Did I Go Wrong," a timeless and melancholic ode to love gone south. Evoking traces of The Byrds and The Band, there's little about the song that's worth skipping. Inspired third track, "Abilene," opens with winsome guitars and urgent drums and the disc's first home run chorus. Everything about the song is damn near perfect and its the first of many moments that announce Runaway Dorothy as a band to watch in 2011. The gnomic "Katherine," is a bustling acoustic ditty that draws more on the verses than that of the music itself. That's not to say it's unappealing, it just doesn't exactly go anywhere. Inspired harmonica in the middle half certainly helps the cause, but that's about all that really needs to be written about "Katherine." The timeless "A Lot of Love," is undoubtedly the disc's centerpiece, a towering, hypnotic and utterly painful declaration of adjusting to solitude. Bolstered by impassioned harmonica, powderkeg drums and driving guitars, it has the kind of oomph and gravitas that artists strive decades to achieve, but never do. That Dave did this on his first full-length attempt should not be ignored....full text |
| Katiedarbyrecommends |
| "The Arc" greeted me with a unique problem. I was fully ready, after listening, to sit down and tell you all of the things it reminds me of, and all of the things it doesn't-- and then I started to think about the fallacy of review. I mean, doesn't it seem like there has to be a better way to discuss something than to discuss the things that came before it? Shouldn't the review be more about the music than other music that I happen to be well-versed in? So I'm going to get the comparisons out of the way, and then I'll delve into a more focused review. Because there is NO WAY to review this record without giving a few comparisons. Runaway Dorothy frontman David Parnell manages to evoke a Carolina dust without resorting to twang (which, of course, immediately brings Ryan Adams to mind). There are so many moments on this album that are reminiscent of early Adams-- to the point where my favorite cut on the disc (or at least the one I've listened to the most times on repeat), "Katharine Song," has a line, "Tell me please/ where you sleep / tonight." This, of course, immediately puts me in the middle of Whiskeytown's "Factory Girl"-- "And now I don't know where she is / Or what bed she's sleeping in". Of course, the direct address is, if nothing else, more straightforward, and there's a major difference, but it's like the ghost of Adams is all over these tracks. In fact, I dare you to listen to the opening riff of "Volatile" and not think of "Afraid, Not Scared." The band themselves also make reference to...full text |
Runaway Dorothy lyrics
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