Next Wave #677: Dilly Dally

Inspirational Toronto punks...

With a debut album that seemingly nods its appreciation to 'Goo'-era Sonic Youth and the quiet/loud formula of Pixies – on paper, Toronto’s Dilly Dally are nothing out of the ordinary.

But the band never intended on sounding like anything other than themselves: “I think what's similar is that there is no pretension behind those bands” Katie Monks explains to Clash – “I guess that's why people compare us with them. We're just straight up, playing loud rock songs that are real as fuck”.

Of course, it’s never useful to resort to redundant tropes when talking about a band like this one; Dilly Dally deserve more credit than that. With their honest, uncompromised aggression, Dilly Dally are proponents of the strong, unvarnished female; not afraid to be angry, even if it does make them targets of a particular type of male music journalism: “I get called ‘fierce’ and ‘aggressive’ quite a lot,” says Katie when asked about the way music journalists often write about angry women in bands like it’s something strange – a novelty almost – for women in music not to be submissive.

Katie seems more frustrated by the album’s softer aspects being ignored, however: “I wish people would also recognize the sweet and soft parts of ‘Sore’. It’s not all a pounding to the face. It’s a very loving friend reaching out trying to give advice, too” she says.

Indeed, Dilly Dally do peddle a kind of explicit, brutalist sound with its prominent bass, messy guitars and raw, discordant vocals, but at the core of ‘Sore’ is a very noticeable pop sensibility, something the band feel very strongly about: “we all love pop music, karaoke is our favourite past time…it’s important that we reach other people. That’s the best feeling, so yeah – accessible music is the goal, as long as you don’t compromise your integrity. That’s the tricky part, I suppose, but it all feels very natural for us”.

It wasn’t an easy ride for Dilly Dally when they formed, quite surprisingly, there as a lack of space for them in Toronto’s music scene from the start: “we were too aggressive and noisy for the indie-pop scenes, but we weren’t aggressive and noisy enough for the DIY basement scenes. It was like push and pull. We were always trying to carve out a place for us here, without compromising our vision”.

We talk about political music, and I ask her opinion on the seeming lack of political lyrics in punk in the rise of Trump etc: “there’s a lot of political music out there. Think about Kendrick’s record, and Pussy Riot. There are also tons of musicians with radical opinions that just isn’t accessible, so it’s not really being heard. I love that Kendrick record, but I’m not gonna listen to it every day. It kinda makes me feel uncomfortable”.

It’s clear that Dilly Dally are a very real band, and their lack of pretension is to be admired. Never one for taking herself too seriously, when asked about album number two, Katie says – without a hint of irony: “it’s going to sound like Enya’s spirit being axed in a dark green forest. There’s swans everywhere, and blood and stuff, but her spirit never dies…”

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Words: Hayley Scott
Photography: David Waldman

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