Toronto is under the national spotlight with Drake and his beloved Raptors in the NBA finals and consequently all over our television screens – yet some of Toronto’s chosen children slipped into Austin, under the radar, with a show at Barracuda on Saturday. Dilly Dally has a signature serrated grunge sound with idiosyncratic vocal affectations that coalesce into a table saw of vicious melodies and chord progression bliss. 

 Lead singer, Katie Monks, has all the attitude and humility that you can handle from a Canadian rocker, and then some, but while the crowd wasn’t the largest i’ve seen them play for – they still went about eviscerating mediocrity with wanton abandon. Hits from their debut album, Sore, are still as magnetizing as they were when they arrived in the national consciousness four years ago. “Desire” and “Candy Mountain”  are anthemic in a way that makes pop and rock  music writers green with envy.

The Canadian quartet would cover Drake’s “Know Yourself” in calamitous and thundering fashion, while also making their way through hits from their 2018 album, Heaven.  A gem that fell out of the pocket of 90’s grunge band influences and rolled into the late 2010’s with unrelenting ferocity, Dilly Dally is showing that the fire that burned in rock audiences twenty years ago is roaring back to life with uncompromising sound and authentic attitude.

A lazy summer heat beat down on the Line Hotel’s outdoor pool as mass of laissez-faire humanity lounged around the oasis like bespectacled sun lizards. Local musicians, instagram-obsessed 20-somethings, and tattooed Californian bros all assembled to absorb the easygoing aesthetic, as well as the brilliantly curated music of music legend, Peanut Butter Wolf.

Kicking off a music-focused Summer pool party series, The Line Hotel pulled off a coup in getting Chris Manak aka Peanut Butter Wolf to appear in such a casual and understated setting. PBW is producer/ DJ and founder of Stones Throw Records, one of the most successful and influential indie labels of all time. Yet there he stood, pulling vinyl out of crates behind a poolside DJ setup, largely ignored by the oblivious bathing suit-clad day drinkers. A gaggle of hip-hop heads and inspired bikini girls floated around the DJ booth as PBW dropped audio jewels on his decks.

Time evaporated as the sunset of the evening’s pool party began to avail itself.  Peanut Butter Wolf continued to paint the ambience with deep hip-hop cuts and danceable rhythms. A quintessential Austin afternoon that ebbed away beautifully and helped frame what a casual Sunday pool party should look like.