Dizzy: "The first time we started playing we were like, yeah, this sounds good. This is going to work, y’know?" | Dork
Dizzy: "The first time we started playing we were like, yeah, this sounds good. This is going to work, y’know?"
With a debut album having just dropped, Canadians Dizzy have our heads spinning.
Life in the suburbs can be tough. Quiet nights in the shadow of a city, it’s a sort of half-way point for a whole range of different people stuck in life’s up and downs. It’ll be the place where city workers go to retreat from the madness, a step back from the incessant pace of life scattered across roads and junctions that never sleep, surrounded by a never-ending cycle of pressure and parties. For a few, it’s a natural direction they find when the city spits them out, churning them into a mess that can’t stand what its become and now has to pick up the pieces on the outskirts rather than trying to rebuild within.
Yet, for kids - the suburbs are something else. A hopeful yet spacious place to discover who they really are, learning and loving within their quiet evening streets. About walking between friends houses and tackling broken hearts, celebrating that confusing time where becoming an adult meets the unabashed freedom of being young. That life, and those vital moments of suburban hope are where we find Dizzy, the sort of band capturing what it’s like to be lost - because sometimes being lost is exactly where we need to be.
For Dizzy, that’s Oshawa in Ontario, Canada - a General Motors town where thousands work in the car business, and aside from that there’s not much going on. It’s a playground that’s both a benefit and a hindrance, where although they didn’t have fun hidden around every corner, they could have the freedom to find themselves.
From the age of 14, that kinship was there between Katie and Charlie, and its blossoming became what Dizzy is today. Born out of those uncertain years of feeling confused and going through those momentous coming of age moments in life, debut album ‘Baby Teeth’ feels like more of a natural documentation of that time more than most.
Rather than the glorified headiness, it’s a raw reflection - ‘Stars And Moons’ is a weaving cocktail of love’s hardships and blooming joys, ‘Swim’ is a swaggering blend of electronics and sky-cutting guitars that rise and rise into a mesmeric whole, ‘Pretty Thing’ is doe-eyed in young love and those wayward crushes that come with being near someone close, ‘Joshua’ may be a new defining heartbreak anthem and ‘In Time’ is a nostalgic ode to memories of a more innocent time. Everything is felt - every delicate line and flashback - a collective reckoning of what it means to go through it all and come out the other side with at least some sense of optimism intact.
“It’s all a challenge,” notes Katie, stopping to think about how these memories and stories have led them to where they are today.
With album number one about to make its way into the world, Dizzy are already looking firmly at what comes next. “For me, I want to figure out if we can do a second album and be proud of it,” notes Katie, “and whether it can be as good as the record we’ve made now. That’s the goal.”
If ‘Baby Teeth’ is anything to go by, Katie and Dizzy are about to head far away from the suburbs that made them. A record of unflinching beauty, and a band able to soundtrack emotions in a way very few can - they’re about to have more than a few people in a spin.
Taken from the September issue of Dork. Dizzy’s debut album ‘Baby Teeth’ is out now.
Words: Jamie Muir
Dizzy are onto something. That blend of emotional storytelling and spiralling, but uplifting openness in the music they make is an immediate pull - following in the footsteps of the likes of Death Cab For Cutie and Alvvays in taking everyday life and moulding it into something more. Over the past few years, it’s been a moulding process for sure, but now they sit on the cusp of releasing a debut album.
With album number one about to make its way into the world, Dizzy are already looking firmly at what comes next. “For me, I want to figure out if we can do a second album and be proud of it,” notes Katie, “and whether it can be as good as the record we’ve made now. That’s the goal.”
If ‘Baby Teeth’ is anything to go by, Katie and Dizzy are about to head far away from the suburbs that made them. A record of unflinching beauty, and a band able to soundtrack emotions in a way very few can - they’re about to have more than a few people in a spin.
Taken from the September issue of Dork. Dizzy’s debut album ‘Baby Teeth’ is out now.
Charli xcx has shared a fashion-forward new video for forthcoming album track ‘SS26’
Further details surrounding the record have yet to be confirmed.