Dilly Dally says goodbye to its fans with two last shows: ‘ I’m really just grateful,’ says singer Enda Monks

Is Dilly Dally a done deal?

For now at least, yes, it would indeed appear that one of Toronto’s most savage and celebrated indie outfits is calling it a day, having announced its looming breakup after nearly 15 years together to the world at large via social media on March 2. It hits the stage in its hometown one final time this coming weekend for a pair of sold-out shows at Lee’s Palace on Saturday and Sunday.

It will be a bittersweet affair for the Dilly Dally faithful, who will be left with just two albums, a handful of singles, one truly iconic Drake cover — seriously, Dilly Dally’s version of “Know Yourself” buries the original — and a legacy of walloping live shows by which to remember the quartet. But at least we get to throw the goggles on and stare into the atomic wind at White Sands a couple more times as co-founders/co-guitar-shredders Enda Monks and Liz Ball, and the formidable rhythm section of Annie Jane Marie and Benjamin Reinhartz dutifully rip it up for the believers before taking their final collective curtain call and, to borrow a phrase from Dilly Dally’s farewell Instagram post, continuing their journeys separately.

“Why are we celebrating?” said Monks (who formerly went by the first name Katie) during a conference call with the rest of the band earlier this week.

“Well, I think we just wanted to do a last show so we could all have closure and kind of share this moment with the fans. We know we have a lot of fans who are very ‘emo’ about our music and have come to so many shows and been so supportive, so it’s been positive. Liz and Annie, these shows were really, like, y’all’s idea because you wanted to share this moment with the fans so, you know, Ben and I were down to rock.

“Without getting too personal, it’s just that overall everyone still wants to do music but in different scenarios than, like, exactly this. And that’s what is going to be most fulfilling for everyone, I guess.”

Judging by the uncommonly effervescent nature of the two new songs, “Morning Light” and “Colour of Joy,” unveiled two months ago as a parting gift to their fans, it could simply be that Dilly Dally as a whole is simply in a better and healthier place than the tormented young foursome that churned out the commandingly churlish “Sore” in 2015 and — after teetering very close to a breakup in the wake of that album’s international success — its utterly bruising followup, Heaven, in 2018.

To see Dilly Dally play back in the day was like watching the entire band, and Monks in particular, endlessly digging at a raw nerve. It can’t be easy to summon that energy night after night, especially if one has moved beyond the contexts that originally hatched those emotions.

Over the past few years, for instance, Monks has vociferously stepped up as queer and Marie has come out as transgender. Demons have been wrestled with and put to sleep.

“Yeah, it’s really emotional. So emotional,” laughed Monks. “I think the first record was, you know, an angry one and the second one was an attempt at more of a healing and kind of subdued — I think I’m using that word right — energy, but these two new songs are not angry at all, not dark and doomy at all.

“We’ve all gone through these beautiful queer and genderqueer and trans-queer journeys across all our lives that have finally come to fruition, so the intentions behind these new songs are more about being happy and feeling free and being free.”

There was a glimmer of hope that Dilly Dally might be fully reactivating after COVID-19 limbo last year when the band was invited “out of nowhere, really,” as Reinhartz put it, to open a run of big-ticket dates in the U.S. with My Chemical Romance. But, for reasons the band would prefer to leave mysterious — “I don’t know that I feel like talking about that, myself,” said Monks, to laughter all around — all involved agreed this year that it was time to part ways.

Amicably, though. Which raises the possibility that Dilly Dally could pull an Alexisonfire and occasionally reunite down the road when the right mood and appetite for destruction strike them.

“It’s kind of a ‘Who knows?’ situation,” ventured Reinhartz. “I don’t know. Maybe? During COVID, I went back to school and did an arts-administration program, and we all kind of trained in some other things. So I don’t know. I think we’re all kind of, like, ‘Let’s just call it for now.’

“Honestly, though, over the past nine years or however long I’ve been in the band, I never would have expected to play venues I’d read about growing up as a kid and to, you know, meet people who have the name of our band tattooed on their bodies. I never would have expected that. That’s definitely wild and I’m looking forward to these shows. I think they’re a celebration of the life of this band.”

If nothing else, after all, not every band can say they’ve had a lingerie-clad Lady Gaga and Sean Lennon (not clad in lingerie) simultaneously swanning about in their smoke-shrouded dressing room after a gig in Manhattan. Dilly Dally has a had a better run than anyone in Dilly Dally — particularly Monks and Ball, who casually formed the band as suburban BFFs in Newmarket back in 2009 — ever expected. Dilly Dally has done good.

“I remember saying to Liz a long time ago — it must have been after the first record or something — that ‘Dilly Dally is bigger than us now,’” said Monks.

“I don’t remember why I mentioned it back then, but it has kind of become something that feels bigger than us and there’s a weight to it and it feels like a responsibility, in a lot of ways. I’m really grateful that Annie and Liz advocated for these last shows to happen so we could have this moment and to release those two songs and just, like, celebrate what’s happened.

“And it’s kind of funny because, at first, they were like ‘Let’s do it for the fans’ and ever since we announced the shows I’m remembering how much I get — and I’m only trying to speak for myself, but I imagine for my bandmates as well — how much we receive from the fans. We’ve never been paid a significant amount of money enough for any of us to call this a stable living, but the amount of love and support and beautiful energy we’ve received from the people who’ve discovered and cared for our band and journey has been so life-changing and empowering, and I’m really just grateful.”

“I think these shows are going to my favourite shows I ever play,” offered Ball. “I’m just at a place mentally on my journey where, I don’t know, I think I’m just gonna have a good time because there’s nothing else after. So why not have a good time? I’ll have all my friends there and these are gonna be the best shows. I think. So I’m looking forward to this weekend. A lot. Personally.”

Added Monks: “Same here.”

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