Canadian dream inspired decision by British rockers
Blame Canada, baby. British indie/punk band Dream Wife is so completely bubbling over with talent and energy and personality and tunes upon tunes upon tunes that it obviously would have happened anyway but, as luck of bragging rights would have it, the Great White North has played a crucial role in the London-based trio’s rapid evolution from a “joke band” to a very real “dream band” of the moment.
True, the Dream Wife saga is somewhat convoluted and clouded with disinformation — and purposefully so, one suspects, since the group originated in 2014 as a quasi-feminist, Spinal Tap-esque art-school project in Brighton. One essential point of national pride remains, however: when canny school chums Rakel Mjoll, Alice Go and Bella Podpadec decided to really commit to the bit (for course credit on budding performance artist Mjoll’s part, no less) they were still just looking for a means of financing a collective trip to Canada. And their first show? Right here in Toronto at the Cavern, a subterranean space beneath the HI Hostel on Church St.
“At the time, there was a lot of cool music that we were aware of in Canada,” explains nimblefingered guitarist Go from New York, just three days into Dream Wife’s first-ever headlining tour of North America. “At uni we used to listen to, like, a lot of Grimes and Mac DeMarco and stuff and it seemed like there was an exciting scene happening there. As well, we had a lot of friends out there. Rakel had met a lot of people at Iceland Airwaves, this festival in Iceland, and had connected with a lot of people from Canada through that.
“There were some ‘found’ DIY shows sometimes, but ultimately it was just us travelling around on coaches and reaching out to friends and them making this possible for us. And still now it feels like this core surrounding Dream Wife, none of this would be possible without the team or the friends and the fans who supported us all the way through. And, I think, that tour, in a way, was us really seeing what the kindness of people is. It’s such an amazing thing.
“I know it seems random, but I think it was a thing of us just challenging ourselves and kind of setting this mission statement and seeing it through and, I think, since then that’s the attitude: we’ll set these maybe kind of out-there goals and we’ll just do it, learning as we go and seeing it through.” Dream Wife, which now counts a cute boy drummer named Alex Paveley as a touring member instead of a drum machine, has been utterly unstoppable since taking a turn for the serious.
The band’s live shows are such delirious fun that this writer was compelled to catch three of them in three days during a trip to hyperactive frontwoman Mjoll’s hometown of Reykjavik for Iceland Airwaves in 2016, then four more when the band turned up at the South by Southwest festival in Austin the following March. Dream Wife is highly addictive, as much so on this past January’s smashing self-titled debut album — a sweet-‘n’-spiky barrage of monster riffs and huge shout-along choruses that’ll be like catnip to you if you’ve ever thrilled to the Runaways, Le Tigre, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blondie, Elastica or any other strong, femme-forward outfit packing swagger and pop smarts in equal mea- sure — as onstage. Dream Wife tends to make instant fans of anyone who wanders into the room, which is why the ladies, last seen in these parts opening for their pals Sunflower Bean at the Horseshoe Tavern in May, are now already headlining their own North American tour. They play Hard Luck on Saturday, Sept. 29, here in Toronto. Headlining status beckons in the U.K. and Europe on the two tours scheduled to follow this one.
“Next year, we’ll hopefully get into writing the second album and just get back into the creative thing,” says Go. “I think we’re probably gonna be up to nearing 200 shows by the end of the year, maybe 170 or something … until December, yeah, we’re road dogs.” The world could use more bands like Dream Wife at the moment — first and foremost because these are dark times and they’re a font of contagiously ebullient energy, but also because beneath the wry exterior and the giddy hooks there are pointed messages about female empowerment and sexual freedom and standing up for one’s right to be taken seriously regardless of gender, age or sexual proclivity. There’s many an anthem lurking on Dream Wife. “I am not my body/ I am somebody,” declares Mjoll on “Somebody,” for instance, while “F.U.U.” quotes from the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” before launching into a ferocious (if typically joyous) refrain of “I’m gonna cut you up, I’m gonna f-you up, I’m gonna cut you up” and eventually climaxing with an explosive chant of “I spy with my little eye/ Bad bitches.” Girl power, indeed.
“We are going to be addressing issues,” says Go, calling Dream Wife’s abundant sense of humour a means of “breaking the ice. “There are a lot of serious messages in there. But I think at the same time I think it’s about not taking things too seriously, too, and channelling this negativity into positivity, channelling the aggression into solidarity and, I think, that’s what our show is all about, really.
“I think it was a thing where we were studying art at the time and the idea of what a band could be was quite an open thing for us. We’d all been involved in other bands through our teenage years and making music was part of the creative flow for us, in many ways, so it sort of came naturally, but it felt like kind of a liberating thing that it could be our thing, that we could figure it out on our terms. There’s a chemistry to it, I would say, that’s about not limiting yourself and not putting brackets around yourself musically or in terms of genre and all that and especially being women in music. And I don’t think any of us had been in bands quite like that before. But it was just three friends going out to Canada initially and it was so much fun we didn’t want to stop.”
“It was a thing of us just challenging ourselves and kind of setting this mission statement.” ALICE GO DREAM WIFE GUITARIST