By Will McGuirk
Oshawa Juno winning band Dizzy provide the soundtrack for the space between the bedroom and the moon. Their songs are diary entries of small town living while staring out suburban windows at the enormity of the world outside. Their songs are lyrically intimate and sonically vast. That vastness was caught in the Mod Club Apr 16 2019.
The Mod Club would have been deemed ample when this originally booked I’m sure but Dizzy have outgrown that room, based both on audience numbers and the largeness of the sound, drums in particular.
Charlie Spencer, on the kit, created beats, booming, looming beats, seeking an exit, they resounded and reverberated. These songs rear up, stretch out, long-tailed, swimming in the air, searching for an exit, looking to get out and get away, like a burbs-bored everyteen..
All that energy can not be contained so it has to go somewhere and the Mod Club was not going to hold it back. Dizzy is a band which has been playing festivals, some tweaking by the sound folks may have been required to accommodate the container of a club.
I am most curious to see how Dizzy will deal with the Oshawa Music Hall Tuesday Apr 23. They could headline but they are opening for Tokyo Police Club and on tour with the band.
The Music Hall will be their official hometown show but singer Katie Munshaw did debut a new song at the Mod Club, dedicating it to the Six, “Toronto is the first place that gave us a shred of love,” she says before “Twist” is unfurled. The home town is not always the first, no worries. They usually come around.
Dizzy’s rise has been swift. They have been building audiences globally so playing locally is rare and the sold-out crowd made sure to let the band know they were there and appreciated them being there too.
The show showcased their album ‘Baby Teeth’ with Katie saying they wanted to get the “dancers” out of the way at the beginning, slowing down as the evening progressed. Inverted show pacing but it worked for the introverted Dizzy and gave time for the introspective lyrics to be contemplated and absorbed, that long tail curling around the room.
Munshaw gave a shout out to her family, and her sister for whom “Bleachers” was written. The crowd seemed to boo and cheer equally when ‘Joshua” was explained as a song about a boy who dumped her in high school.
A very brief intermission gave way to an encore, one where Charlie Spencer stepped away from the kit and joined his brothers Alex (lead) and Mackenzie (bass) on acoustic guitar, closing out the show in a classic camp fire in the suburbs way.
And then too fast the slow show ended.