Its South Island tour in March was thoroughly extinguished by the first lockdown, and then again by the second lockdown in August, but as Lucy told me when I interviewed her before the ill-fated South Island tour, "We’re definitely going to make it down even if we don’t come down this time."
So, on Friday Dick Move will actually make it to Dunedin (hopefully) as part of its Chop! album release tour. I caught up with vocalist Lucy once again about lockdown experiences and what it means to be political.
How was your lockdown experiences as a musician?
I think the general consensus is that the first one was a lot more fun, a lot more productive. We managed to write new songs, make a little music video for Chop from our homes. The second lockdown was kind of different. It was pretty gutting. We were literally supposed to be leaving Auckland to go on tour the day that the lockdown happened, so we were pretty gutted. We were like "Dammit, why not?". But that one was only three weeks and we kind of just used that as a reset. We were kind of like "Cool, we’ll plan for the summer".
We were lucky enough that we got to do a really awesome festival in between the two lockdowns at Whammy — it was called Deep Dive by Moral Support. So that was really fun, that was the only kind of show that happened in Auckland before we went back into lockdown.
So you’ve been delaying this tour for almost seven months or something?
Yeah, it’s crazy. It feels like forever ago that we actually recorded this album. It was in January, so we were lucky enough to quickly get that done before the world fell apart. And it feels nice to have accomplished something this year.
You say that one of your drives is to turn late-night political chat into action. What does that mean?
It means giving a voice to people that need it. There’s so much to be rarked up about in the world at the moment, and we’re hoping that, you know, our music gives a voice to the people that need it, like, working people to women. We just hope that it’s a cathartic experience when you watch us and kind of listen to the music, and that you feel empowered. And also we’ll ignite maybe more political chat that you want to have. That kind of thing. Just kind of spreading the word and empowering people.
Punks have been doing that forever. The sad part is when you listen to punk bands from the ’80s, they’re angry about the same things that haven’t changed.
Yeah, we’re still screaming about the same things, and that’s the reason why most of these bands exist because they’ve been inspired by bands before them who did the same thing. But yeah, I wish we didn’t have to scream about the same things, I wish that everything had sorted itself out, but we’ll just keep doing it until it helps. It definitely helps to feel angry about something rather than sad about it. Anger is a much more productive function.
See it
Dick Move album release, with Koizilla, Cuck and Night Lunch, Friday, October 30, at Dive. Entry $10.
- Fraser Thompson
