Although there seem to be a lot of people talking about The Thermals show with Summer Cannibals and Amanda X tonight at Union Transfer, for those of you who are 21+, I would highly recommend an alternative just a few blocks over in Eraserhood. Tonight Dilly Dally and Fat White Family will be double-headlining The Black Box at Underground Arts, along with local openers Littler. Earlier this year I got a chance to catch up with Dilly Dally frontperson and co-founder Katie Monks, who is far sweeter and more charming than you might expect of someone who embodies her volumes of badassery.
I ask Katie about the highlights of Dilly Dally since their debut LP, Sore, dropped last October on Partisan (which has since seen the band spend a lot of time on the road, including a stop at our very own Kung Fu Necktie last November) and she tells me that, while she loves being on the road, sometimes it’s the moments of reflection that are the most satisfying.
“It kind of all becomes a blur for me. I just like touring and being in a new city every night. I kind of like that I don’t remember where we were on what nights and with what bands, but my favorite day of the whole year was just when we came home and played a homecoming show in Toronto and all of our friends were there and it was like we finally stopped and smelled the flowers for real… for real, for real, for real. Like coming home and celebrating with all of your friends how awesome this shit is.”
The sound of Sore is an amalgam of much of the early-mid-‘90s best kinds of alt rock, including latter-era college rock, post-riot grrrl, and the best kinds of bands to grace Lollapalooza’s second stages. The band have drawn a plethora of comparisons to Pixies, in addition to the likes of Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Pogues. My own personal favorite track of theirs is “Green,” which I would described as if Brody from The Distillers were fronting a college band in 1991 that was on tour with Throwing Muses. Katie tells me that that song is actually quite significant for the band and also her bond with fellow co-founder and guitarist, Liz Ball.
“That song is the oldest song on the record. I wrote that eight years ago. That was the first song I wrote for Dilly Dally. That was the beginning of it all and it’s always in our set. It’s the anthem between me and Liz.”
As for Dilly Dally’s future, Katie tells me that they hope to continue spending a lot of time on the road: “Obviously, there’s just going to be a lot of touring. What we want to do is just play music forever.” She also tells me that the band is happier than ever about their current live show: “I think that now, as time goes on, we just become more comfortable onstage and willing to move around and bump into each other. And the more we evolve we just get better at being Dilly Dally.”
Finally, I ask Katie if she’s a fan of David Lynch, whose former stomping grounds Dilly Dally will be stomping through tonight and she shares an incredibly endearing and apparently significant memory.
“I have to tell you my favorite David Lynch movie; I’m holding it in my hand right now… The Elephant Man. One time when me and Liz were teenagers we watched it in pitch black and we balled so hard. I’ve never balled that hard in my whole life… We used up a whole box of tissues.”
