Meet the band who sing about non-gender-conformist fucking

By Joseph Earp

It is a truth universally acknowledged that musicians like to sing about fucking. The pantheon of rock history is littered with used condoms and various unidentifiable stains, full of anthems dedicated to the flesh that range in tone from the tittering subtleties of The Beatles’ ‘Hard Days’ Night’ to the absolutely-nothing-else-you-could-confuse-this-with bravado of ‘Fuck The Pain Away’.

And yet most musicians are seemingly unable to write about sex. They either awkwardly sidestep the right issues or stumble straight into wrong ones, confusing ignorance with a kind of punky disregard for convention.

But ‘most’ does not mean ‘all’ and Dilly Dally are the exception to the rule. Whether you currently know anything about the Toronto based punk outfit or not is no matter – Dilly Dally are one of those bands ready to change your life. All that is required of you is your attention.

 

Dilly Dally Don’t Sing About Heteronormative Sex.

In this day and age, one would safely assume that singing about LGBTQI concerns and relationships would be as natural as singing about straight ones. But love stories in music are still predominantly ‘him and her’. Songs that tackle LGBTQI subjects are often political in nature rather than personal.

Even musicians who live an openly LGBTQI lifestyle will sing about sex and desire in heteronormative terms – singers like pop superstar Ricky Martin still constructs his songs as though he were a straight man singing about women.

Dilly Dally don’t. But perhaps just as importantly, they don’t make a big deal out of the fact that they don’t. When the objects of singer Katie Monks’ lust are given a gender (which isn’t always) they’re female. And yet even this doesn’t limit the readings of the songs.

These aren’t just ballads about female on female desire – they consciously separate themselves from matters such as gender. A song like ‘Desire’ is about just that – desire. It doesn’t matter who you are, or which gender (if any) you associate with. The burn and the yearn of temptation rises above such trivial concerns, and becomes about flesh on flesh, body on body, mind meeting mind.

‘Deisre’ is about fucking, and wanting to fuck. It’s about being fulfilled, and wishing for fulfilment. It’s about things that matter more than the conditions you were born in. It’s about things that break those conditions apart.

Dilly Dally Don’t Confuse Lust With Ownership.

Too often male songwriters paint love and desire as a means for control. Sleeping with someone means having them. Taking them to bed means owning them. After all, how many songs exist with a chorus along the lines of ‘be mine’? Objects of desire are painted as pretty, powerless things – drawings of bodies rather than actual flesh and blood beings.

And yet again Dilly Dally are the exception to a particularly dull rule. On a song like ‘Get To You’ Katie Monks sings about pain and wanting, but she does so in a way that makes it clear that it’s her pain and her wanting. She doesn’t confuse her own feelings with those of her significant other.

In fact, the other person is almost inconsequential to the matter. Who cares who you love? Who cares who hurt you? What matters is you. You’re not responsible for anyone else, after all. You’re not beholden to any other body.

Dilly Dally Know Words Don’t Always Matter.

The body has no memory. The ache of an orgasm. The thrill of a stubbed toe. These things can’t be recalled or recollected except in studied intellectual terms. We can’t bring them on simply by thinking about them. And it is in this way that language fails the form. You can’t talk about pain and experience it. You can’t ask for pleasure and feel it.

Dilly Dally know this, and so often the true burden of expressing lust and longing is left entirely to Monks’ voice. Her howls speak echoes. The edge to her voice, that rasping, rust-and-honey quality – that’s where Dilly Dally’s songs live. That’s where the loving gets loved and the hurt gets handed out.

After all, Monks could sing ‘Desire’ without uttering a single word, and you’d still know what it was about straight away.

Dilly Dally Make Sex Mythic (And Messy)

Most songwriters fall into one of two problematic areas. They either treat sex as though it were some crystal ornament, passing the thing from one gloved hand to the other. Or, they try to go too far the other way, assuming that a vulgar tone is the only right one.

In truth, of course, sex is a mix of these two things. It is mythic – greater than us, the reason for us – and yet when it comes down to it, fucking is fucking. It doesn’t deserve poetry, and yet it absolutely does.

Dilly Dally understand this contrast. A song like ‘Snake Head’ is full of fluid – it’s a viscous mix of desire and sweat and blood and hatred and love. It’s primal, and sweet, and gives off an unmistakable heat. But it doesn’t only live on the flesh. It’s not only about dotting the skin with goosebumps. It exists in the brain as well as in the gut. It’s intelligent.

Few other contemporary bands nail this mix of the thoughtful and the fleshy. Few other bands would have the skills to write a song like ‘Burned By The Cold’ a studied and sensual hot take on a broken heart.

But that’s the thing. Dilly Dally aren’t like other bands. Dilly Dally know sex. They know pain. They know desire. They know hatred and they know its opposite. Dilly Dally are a great band, but more than that, Dilly Dally matter, precisely because they never try to.