Disguised beneath spiky textures and jet engine intensity, Dilly Dally’s late 2015 debut, Sore, keeps its sensitive side hidden at first listen. From the opening “One! Two! Three! Four!” of “Desire”, vocalist Katie Monks’ serrated yowl is equal parts victory cry and exorcism, finding the shortest route to every emotional extreme. But beyond its jagged edges, Sore is a thoughtfully simple, pliable piece of art, written to wrap around the listener’s experiences and offer comfort in the spaces that more granular songwriting can’t fill. As a straightforward soundtrack for unraveling complex feelings, it won’t tell you what you want to hear, but invites you to find what you need for yourself.
Calling from a San Francisco taco shop on the first night of the band’s co-headlining tour with Fat White Family, Monks explains that embracing simplicity has been a part of Dilly Dally’s philosophy from the start. “We love music that lacks pretension, and it’s the hardest thing in the world to write a simple pop song that’s cool and good and honest, and that so many people can project their own shit onto, and to make it original, too… It’s just a tug of war to make it say what you want it to say. But creatively, it’s good to put yourself in a box sometimes so you don’t get overwhelmed.”
Defining those artistic boundaries was a long time coming. Born out of a high school friendship between Monks and guitarist Liz Ball, Dilly Dally began as pure teenage ambition, developing into a fervent pursuit after the pair graduated high school. Monks describes those first few years slogging away in Toronto’s basements and clubs, weathering near-constant lineup shifts, as equal parts difficult and formative– especially to the development of her trademark rasp. She credits most of her sound to hours spent experimenting with her voice in her parents’ acoustics-friendly bathroom, but admits that there’s also an emotional component that only came along after years of musical frustration. “I definitely worked toward this kind of shit that I sound like. It’s something that happened over a long period of time. After you have so many dishwashing shifts, and you have so many people fuck you over and hurt you, and you play so many shows to nobody– it’s just like after a while, even in Toronto when we’d go to these basement shows and there’s bands that are ten times more dark and disgusting and angry than Dilly Dally is… you just go ‘yeah, this is the feeling I’ve got right now.’ Your voice just gets a bit more rusty.” Her tone brightens. “It’s probably all the weed, too.”
Since those days, and with the addition of bassist Jimmy Tony and drummer Benjamin Reinhartz, Dilly Dally has become all about taking center stage without becoming the focus of its own art. While Monks’ lyrics feature autobiographical elements, she takes a wide perspective on her own stories to harness larger themes, leaving narratives open to interpretation and crafting songs as emotional skeleton keys. “It’s important and awesome to give listeners the ability to think about this stuff and let it be personal for them,” she says. “Music is personal and therapeutic, and at its best is empowering, so that’s the goal.”
As a result, she’s protective of Dilly Dally’s songs as subjects for listeners’ own projections, and is initially reluctant to discuss them in any detail out of concern that it’ll detract from that purpose. She later explains that each track stemmed from a moment when she wanted to “swim in a certain emotion”, and shifting gears, she offers a few loose descriptions. “‘Snake Head’ is all about when you’re frustrated and you feel a disconnect, like people don’t acknowledge you because you’re being emotional, about being in a PMSing mood. ‘The Touch’ I wrote after I had a friend tell me he was suicidal and I wanted to write a song to help him, like, ‘life is worth living’. ‘Purple Rage’ I wrote because I got fuckin’ rejected by someone I was in love with, and you know what? It was in such a chill way. But you don’t like feeling rejected, so I wrote an empowering song about self-reinvention.”
Dilly Dally’s music is steeped in extremes, but Monks discusses it all with an unfazed candor that she attributes to the release of the writing process itself. Working toward a sound that turns pain into strength and strength into something superhuman, songwriting isn’t a chore for her; it’s a necessary daily outlet. As a result, she says that it has become one of her biggest challenges under the band’s extensive tour schedule. “It puts things on hold, and that sucks. It’s not like I’m like ‘oh shit, clock’s ticking, better deliver an album to our label’ or something. That’s not how it is at all. It’s just like ‘oh, my mental health is shitty, I need to be writing songs’. Aside from the biz, aside from all that shit, I just need to be writing songs for me, to function so I don’t go crazy and just look at my cell every two seconds. I’m just doing social media all the time. Which is like fun, it’s nice, but a little piece of my heart, a little piece of my soul is shoved underneath a bunch of rocks right now.”
Still, she says that the chance to perform nearly every night makes it all worth it. Immune to stage fright, the confidence that comes through in Monks’ vocals is genuine. “It’s always just been like, my home is on the stage. I don’t know why. I’m not like ‘oh, I was born to be on MTV’ or something, not Destiny’s Child or something, but I’ve always just been really wanting to be center of attention, I’m the youngest in my family, and have always just been really encouraged by my parents to be outspoken, and bold, and funny, and opinionated and kind of like a leader, you know? So I’ve always just grown up being like ‘me! Everybody look at me,'” she laughs. “I get anxiety when I’m alone. I get anxiety when I’m not talking.”
Reflecting on the whirlwind six-month stretch since Sore’s release, Monks mentions that even though this will be the foursome’s second tour in support of the album, this trip is anything but been-there-done-that; it’s a triumphant return, and that’s only built the band’s enthusiasm. “It’s more exciting, because the record has had some time to sit, and people are telling us their stories about how the music’s really affected their lives.” True to form, she mostly keeps tight-lipped about the stories themselves, but if there’s any theme to Dilly Dally’s line of thinking, it’s that the details are often beside the point. “I don’t need to retell the stories, because it’s really the emotionality of it that I connect with,” says Monks, explaining that those conversations with fans tie back to her original hopes for the album. “It’s a celebration of emotions in a really functional, healthy way, and not totally a black hole of shittiness. Like, it’s all going to be okay.”
Catch Dilly Dally and Fat White Family tomorrow night (5/4) at Brighton Music Hall, presented by Allston Pudding. Tickets are still available.
