Dolores Forever Proving Themselves as an Indie Staple at Oporto, Leeds
Written by Richard O'Brien Edited by Eve Moat
Let me take you back to March 2023, strangely with snow still on the ground in Leeds. Sat in the Leeds Student Radio office browsing a list of new songs provided by a promoter. While the list may have had 20 or 30 songs, one stood out. It was continuously clawing away at my attention each time I tried to continue my way through the list. That song was Dolores Forever’s ‘Good Time All The Time’. At the time, the band’s YouTube channel had 2 songs without videos. Since then, the band has slowly grown under the radar but is now ready for your attention with their first headline tour. While this may be their first headline tour, the indie pop group has been in the music scene far longer than you might expect.
After becoming friends at a house party, both working as songwriters at the time, the duo of Hannah Wilson and Julia Fabrin decided to form a band. Dolores Forever was formed releasing their first single ‘Kilimanjaro’ 2 years ago. Since releasing that debut track, the band has been progressing towards their original goal of playing in stadiums. Although it could be easily misunderstood, this dream is not born from a place of vanity. Rather, it is a fear of being labelled an acoustic band despite producing songs that demand to be played loud. Over the summer, Live at Leeds in the Park was filled with that noise. On Wednesday night, Oporto was the next stepping stone towards that vision. While the end goal may not be playing Oporto, the duo certainly didn’t show that. Making their way through the sellout crowd, admittedly a small one given the size of the venue, the two were dressed in Alice in Wonderland-esc dresses. The perfect contrast to their grown-up lyrics focused on the trials and tribulations of womanhood in the modern age. From the bands perspective, most songs focus on either money, death, expectations, or a combination of all three.
As a band still awaiting their big, breakout hit after 2 years, the setlist felt evenly weighted. Rather than waiting the full hour set for their biggest hit at the end, the earlier parts were evenly balanced with the latter. I would argue the band fired out the blocks swinging with their best tracks. As evidence, three of their four most-played songs on Spotify and their latest single all appeared in the opening third of the set. Reliably, Dolores Forever bingo was checked off with all songs featuring at least one of the themes of money, death, or expectations.
Another band with similar existential fears is The Big Moon. And fans of the indie queens should look out for Dolores Forever’s new track ‘Shut up and Eat the Pasta’ which previewed halfway through the set. Much like The Big Moon’s ‘Dog Eat Dog’, the song combines genuinely emotive lyrics with humour and the mundane. “Is this as good as it gets?” The band asks dejectedly before shortly moving on to singing “Shut up and eat the pasta, it’s going to taste great”, something all students can attest to. A slightly less enjoyable part of the shared human experience, break-ups, are vividly detailed in the aforementioned debut single. Although most seasoned gig attendees could have spotted the change in tone as the drummer exited the stage two-thirds of the way through the set, the stripped-back acoustic style came as a welcomed surprise. With an emphasis on lyrics, the duo drew attention to their songwriting capabilities leaving no listener questioning their origins in the industry. Just take the lyrics “When I fell, I hit so hard. Landing on the bones of mountain climbers.” Despite this brief change in tone – and lyrics – the duo were down but not out. An unreleased song about the pressure of the music industry and the need to keep going, sung with both vocalists facing toward each other for the majority of the track, felt like an insight into the band’s genuine friendship. That friendship was on full display as Julia laughed whilst explaining how she had previously (and more importantly, accidentally) set her hair on fire in Oporto, or as Hannah nervously reminisced about her phobia of talking in front of large numbers of people.
If the closing of the set is anything to go by, Dolores Forever should get used to the crowds. Arguably no lyric felt more relatable to the audience than “Serotonin in my mind keeping me awake” featured in the closing song ‘Party In My Mind’. Leaving the packed Oporto, every member of the audience knows exactly what Dolores Forever meant with that lyric.
