Some albums gently guide you through emotions.This album does not do that.
Stand as a Rock by Dorine Levy kicks your door off its hinges, hurls a survival kit at your chest, and gives you a knowing look that says “Yeah, buddy. You’re gonna need this.” Dorine’s latest release isn’t just a collection of 18 songs. It’s a genre-blending, emotionally devastating power move. It doesn’t request your attention. Rather, it demands it with the sheer force of a train derailment. It throws you headfirst into soaring anthems, hushes you into raw, painful introspection, and then leaves you screaming into the void at 3 AM, questioning every life decision that led you here.
And honestly? Good. You deserve this. You deserve music that empowers you like this.
From the very first note, Stand as a Rock makes one thing aggressively clear: it will not be confined to a single genre. Indie-folk warmth, alternative grit, and pop sensibility collide like a multi-car pileup, forming something both expansive and deeply personal. The album shifts constantly, leaving you unsure whether you should be headbanging, sobbing, or having a cinematic epiphany.
Dorine Levy doesn’t just create songs. Rather, she engineers emotional experiences best accented by her vocals, which don’t just carry emotion, they become emotion incarnate. One moment they’re raw and vulnerable, the next they’re layered into the production like haunting echoes of your own subconscious.
If Speak for Yourself-era Imogen Heap had a baby with Björk, raised it on James Blake’s soulful minimalism, and let Bon Iver babysit on weekends, this is what would emerge, except Dorine Levy isn’t imitating them or ripping them off outright. She’s consuming their artistic energy whole, metabolizing it, and then spitting out something entirely her own.
Every moment of this album, from each explosive crescendos to aching whispers in quiet ballads, they are all meticulously crafted with the kind of precision that suggests Dorine Levy has either perfected time travel or exists outside the constraints of human emotion. Personal highlights for me include Love is Around You, The Times I Linger, These Are The Ways and the title track; all gorgeous songs I found the most resonance out of in my listens.
Dorine Levy doesn’t do shallow, mass-market, “here’s a vague metaphor about drowning” nonsense.She also doesn’t do overcooked, faux-deep poetry that says nothing but sounds profound if you squint. What she does is rip her heart out, throw it on the table, and invite you to sift through the pieces.
With an eclectic fusion of indie, pop, and alternative influences, Stand as a Rock is deeply personal, resonant, and unflinchingly honest. The lyrics explore strength, resilience, love, and self-discovery, but in a way that never feels forced or artificial.
And the best part? At no point does it ever feel fake. No lazy metaphors, no “hmm yes let’s mention the ocean and pretend that’s deep” nonsense, just raw, honest storytelling that makes you reconsider your entire existence.
With Stand as a Rock, Dorine Levy doesn’t just make music. She crafts an emotional endurance test, and one that strengthens you as a result.
Stand as a Rock lifts you up, rips you into a thousand tiny emotional fragments, and then gently reassembles you into something slightly bruised, slightly unsteady, but somehow better than before.
Whether you’re here for the soaring anthems, the quiet devastation, or just the sheer, overwhelming weight of it all, this album is not something you can just casually put on in the background.
Dorine Levy has made an album that will grab you by the soul and shake you until you feel things.
So go ahead. Hit play. Stand As A Rock. And Stand Tall.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
