When watching Dilly Dally, there's an uncertainty that rests on our shoulders, like we're not sure whether she'll be soft and easy, with whistle-like blows humming high octaves, or whether it'll be rough- like she's just about to throw down her guitar and light a cigarette, urgently. We couldn't tell you. But it's in that tension- that push and pull between the light and the dark that we find her. She is all of these things. Her face barely moves from it's rested position, with the exception of one accidental smile, then ah, there she is- the inviting vulnerability of a young girl. Both gentle and strong she rings it all out, a soaked cloth let out to dry on the line. Dilly Dally is a name that requires song, you really can't say it any other way. It's a playfulness to juxtapose the rawness of her performance, the forced breaks in the chorus, the howls and the whispers. It's all entirely unexpected, and entirely inviting.

view Dilly Dally's older set below

  The second act to play the park was Dilly Dally, Katie Monks graced us with her extraordinarily powerful acoustic pieces that carried the weight of it's own charm and aggression, making you believe everything she sings as gospel truth from someone who has really lived it. They are songs that are unpolished, and perfect in that way. With the vocal influxes of Dylan, she infuses a kind of punk sensibility and marries it with jangly rock anthems. But she maintains enough of her own original composition to resist any comparison, making her something of an anomaly. She evokes anger with such sharp cleverness that we're never left feeling mad, but understood, in a way.

  Her coarse and smokey vocals opened unapologetically with 'Green', stopping the residue of in-between park chatter, as everyone digested her words singing, "I need food and I need light, and darling I need you". Her wild and forceful disposition is softened with that phrase, that underneath, she's carrying a longing for love like everyone else, whether she shouts or whispers it.