Dilettante share the 'feel bad hit of the summer' titled 'Fun' + announce new album
Dilettante announce new album Life of the Party + share new single ‘Fun’ ahead of performance at The Great Escape festival
Life of the Party is set for release on October 11th via Launchpad+ / EMI North
Previous Support
"A white-knuckle ride of gloriously tuneful 20-something angst. A jazzy, brassy paean to modern anxiety. (Dilettante) is a consummate multi-instrumentalist, making brilliantly extravagant art-pop soap operas."
- Bob Fischer, Electronic Sound Magazine
"One of my new favourite bands."
- Tom Robinson, 6Music
"The North-East's favourite up and coming angst-masters - Dilettante's set is an exceptional performance piece, an unreal amount of live layering. Francesca spits vocals with deft pronunciation; this level of art wouldn't work with sunshine and smiles. Exceptional."
- Damian Robinson, NARC Magazine
Also supported by:
The Big Issue, Marc Riley, Steve Lamacq, Gideon Coe & more!
‘Fun’, the new single from northern outsider-pop project Dilettante, is out today via Launchpad+ / EMI North, ahead of the band’s performance at The Great Escape Festival on the 16th and 17th of May (details below). Dilettante is the project of Leeds born multi-instrumentalist and Paul Hamlyn award winning composer Francesca Pidgeon. Known for her loop heavy live shows and contagious art pop, when not making music as Dilettante, Francesca also moonlights as a member of BC Camplight and enjoys slamming into people at roller derby.
The release comes with accompanying video made by Light in the Tower productions, where Pidgeon congregated her skate pals, old and new, to skate around Stretford Public Hall for the day and eat a lot of cake.
On ‘Fun’, Francesca says:
“We’ve been calling this our ’feel-bad hit of the summer’ - it’s definitely feel-bad, we’ll wait and see if it’s a hit. It’s about that feeling of not having a very good time when you know you’re supposed to be; it’s the feeling I always get on my birthday where the pressure to enjoy myself sort of boils over and I end up having a meltdown every year.
Lyrically, a lot of it came from my changing relationship with my only real hobby and one true love - roller derby. I’ve been playing on and off for about 8 years now and for the majority of that time it’s been the only straight up good thing in my life. However, for various reasons, I started feeling really unhappy in my team early last year and I just remember going to training and sort of having this nursery rhyme melody going round in my head, and thinking ‘I’m not having any fun, no I’m not’ which obviously became the chorus for this song.
Musically, this is my first release where I’ve had other vocalists appear on a track. I had two of my bandmates, Caitlin LM and Kathy Pacific, come down and sing some backing vocals and we all hit some ‘percussion’ (i.e. old coffee mugs and radiators). There was also one point in the breakdown section where I told them to try a take where they actually sounded unhinged and like they were having a real breakdown and we all immediately ended up in this uncontrollable laughing fit which does in fact come across as completely unhinged in a much more effective way than I ever could have hoped when I suggested it.”
A self-proclaimed megalomaniac, Francesca taught herself to play guitar, clarinet, saxophone, piano, bass and trumpet and bought a loop pedal in an attempt to avoid human contact. However, this proved difficult and she soon enlisted the aid of Aaron Collins-Wood (bass) Jack Mee (drums) and Rachel Rimmer (guitar/vocals). 2022 saw the release of Dilettante’s debut album Tantrum which garnered widespread support from BBC Radio 6 Music as well as sold out headline shows in Manchester, Leeds, Halifax, London, Hull and Liverpool.
Now Dilettante return with their second album Life of the Party, Pigeon’s first totally self-produced record and her most personal one yet. Made in the confines of a converted freight container, the album is an outpouring of frustration towards societal pressures and the acceptance of realising she sees the world differently to others. “I went to see Poor Things and I really felt like Emma Stone’s character made sense to me,” explains Francesca. “She’s really literal and sort of just looks at the way polite society always does things and says, ‘why are we doing that? That doesn’t make sense, let’s do it this way’.”
Life of the Party covers a range of topics, from turning thirty and feeling the pressure to start a family, to feeling constrained within monogamous relationships as well as the more weighty matter of speaking out about sexual assault and dealing with the associated repercussions.
Sonically, the album maintains Dilettante’s signature art pop sound and impressive loop pedal skills whilst also diving into a more synth heavy realm. In parts, the record also sees Pidgeon exploring a gentler sound, reverting back to a more traditional and raw songwriting “I’d been listening to Andy Shauf and Harry Nilsson a lot and I was trying to actually write from the piano”. Life of the Party sees Dilettante continue to push boundaries, “This record is, at times, the weirdest stuff I’ve ever put out and at times the poppiest,” she adds.
Life of the Party is due out on October 11th via Launchpad+ / EMI North, and you can catch Dilettante live this month, dates and details below.
Tracklist
1. Fun
2. Easy Does It
3. Stone
4. To Make Me good
5. Twice As Clean
6. In The Taxi
7. Cake
8. My Toothpaste Ajar
9. I'm In Love With Falling In Love
10. Honey
11. Life Of The Party
12. The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of
Pre-order album & stream single here
Dilettante Tour Dates:
16th May - Brighton, The Great Escape, Queens , 9:15pm
17th May Brighton, The Great Escape, The Hope and Ruin, 2:30pm
18th May - Newcastle, Marrapalooza
22nd May - Newcastle, D'Accord Collaboration @ Glasshouse
23rd May -Manchester, D'Accord Collaboration @ Band On The Wall
26th May - Leeds, Leeds Jazz Festival
26th May - Otley, Shadow Brewing
Dilettante Online:
