ROREY conjures bedroom pop that forces a reckoning with the rough and tattered edges of your inner psyche. Her sincere communication relies on her fearlessly heartfelt songwriting, drawing lyrics from everything from text messages to conversations, to capture unspoken words. Fans can catch her this month at a headlining show at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan’s East Village.
Growing up between New York and Los Angeles, ROREY found herself drawn to the sounds of Santana, Pink Floyd, and Jethro Tull that were played by her parents. By six years old she was playing guitar and at fourteen she’d learned how to play piano. By 2019 she was back on the West Coast, her eyes fixed on launching her music career and releasing music. Two years later she made good on that goal with the drop of the thrumming pop-bop confessional “Predictable.”
Last year she returned with two new singles that announced a shift toward melodically buoyant and at times jangly rock. Both “Loaded Gun” and “Nobody” mingle ROREY’s heart-on-the-sleeve songwriting with breezily driving and searingly cathartic anthems. Summer arrived with her debut EP Apt 7D in tow — a six-track chronicling of self-confrontation and the boiled-over angst of toxic relationships. Elastic riffs bounce around to the tune of her spiraling mental health on “Crash,” while glimmers of indie-pop shine through between the earnest pleas of “Emotional Hangover.”
ROREY’s next project — written around the same time she released her debut single — takes another turn both lyrically and sonically. The tracks of Apt 7D though bristling with heartache still yearned and burned with the bittersweetness of a fading summer. But the songs that will comprise her sophomore EP Dysphoria will seek to navigate the aftermath of her diagnosis with bipolar disorder, embracing in the process a far more visceral and vulnerable sound.
The first preview of that new direction comes in the form of “Standby,” which in turn served as ROREY’s fledgling attempt at recovery. Set adrift within its dreamily glum soundscape — steady acoustic strums urging anxiously, mercurial synths cooly radiating in the background — she wrestles with feelings of being misunderstood and trapped in a limbo of swirling turmoil. “It’s like in the silence of the night I’m tearing myself apart,” she murmurs in frustrated desperation, her candid words eliciting an icy anguish. “And I just don’t even know who I am anymore / I’m just so lost, I’m in pain, it hurts, and I need help, so I’m going home.”
“I wrote this song during a manic episode in 2021. It was my ultimate epiphany in understanding that my healing process wasn’t going to happen instantaneously, I couldn’t just ‘stand by’ waiting for it to happen. I had to take action and commit to getting better, no one was going to do that for me. I had two choices to accept the help offered to me or continue lamenting that everybody was living life and I was stuck getting nowhere.”
“Standby” comes with a music video directed by Demetrios Giannoploulos and ROREY that tries to articulate the physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion endured during that manic episode. The camera follows her on a whirlwind journey from the nighttime cityscape of Manhattan as she escapes homeward. Chased down the street of a snowy suburbia she forces her way into an empty house and climbs into the bathtub — her eyes frantic for a hideaway.
Words: Steven Ward
Dysphoria arrives on May 17th.
Visit ROREY on her website, TikTok, and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
Watch the music video for “Standby” the new single from ROREY below!
