‘The hardest working band’ is a term often thrown around for bands that tour extensively. And often times, it’s misdirected at large-scale bands with dozens or even hundreds of roadies and staff making them look and sound good. But if you want a chance to see a band that would actually be deserving of that title, head to the Bronson Centre Saturday for Toronto’s alt rockers The Dirty Nil.
If you happened to be at Bluesfest in 2019, you might have been lucky enough to catch their opening set for The Offspring and Alexisonfire, and if you extremely lucky, you might have run into them in the mosh pit after their set. But that was just one of a dozen or so shows they’ve played in the city over the years, in a variety of venues from Ritual to Babylon, from Targ to Bronson. Oh, and a set opening for Billy Talent at TD Place.
But before you think the rockers have a specific love affair with the city, it’s not that they keep coming back to Ottawa so much as they just never stop touring. With already 90 shows this year, they’ll be back in the area at Neat Coffee Shop next week, and once they’re done the Canadian leg of the tour, it’s off to Europe for October and then the western Canada leg in November.
We had a chance to catch up with singer Luke Bentham who was gracious enough to devote some of his very limited down time before hitting the road, yet again.
This interview has been edited for length & clarity.
Apt613: I was going through your list of dates recently and that was a busy summer!
Luke Bentham: I haven’t done the final tally, but I do think with certain confidence, I can say that 2025 is the heaviest schedule that we’ve ever had as a band in basically 20 years of being a band. It feels awesome to get to do that this far into our career. Kyle and I are both 35 years old and it feels awesome to be able to still bring it like we did when we were 25. I’m proud of our little basement band and where we’re at.
I think that when you’re sitting at home and confronted by the banality of day to day existence, you get a little bit existential about ‘am I actually a musician or do I just once in a while go out there and play?’ I think it’s very existentially fulfilling to be a troubadour in motion most of the year. Though very tiring,
Listening to the new album, first off: Concise. 10 songs, in 29 minutes. Not necessarily surprising from a punk-ish band, but the songs themselves are a lot different than punk-ish. From the evolution from Fuck Art to the last album to this one, has it been a conscious choice to expand or is it just that’s where the music’s taking you?
I think one of the main reasons why we work and don’t take breaks, and why we just love what we do is because we’ve never really let any kind of outside or inside influence determine what we’re gonna do. And I’d say that this album’s much more varied and dynamic than any other album that we’ve made. I think that’s mostly informed by the fact that we’ve become more competent on our instruments. Traditionally if I would write a song on the acoustic guitar, I’d bring it in and we would turbocharge it and speed it up and make it a ripper.
But I think we’ve become more comfortable with letting songs speak for themselves. If I bring in something quiet, there’s no longer this immediate impulse to turbocharge it because we’ve already got six super fast, loud songs. It’s like ‘Well, this is a cool, interesting thing, let’s not completely smother the cool thing that we’ve got with this one. Let’s just see where it leads.’
And Kyle’s always been fantastic at fashioning the drums, but in the last four or five years, he’s really expanded his command over the instrument, in a quieter way too. His skill in that department has helped really guide the music. For example, if I brought in “Spider Dream,” traditionally we would just convert it into power cords, turn it up to 10, and scream it. But I brought it in and he immediately had this really cool kind of almost Ringo Starr beat over it.
The best times in this band is when we don’t talk, we don’t think, we just play. I can honestly say that there was very little thinking in the creation of this album, and that’s why I love it so much.
It must be challenging, putting yourself out there and being that vulnerable on songs like “Spider Dream,” and “This is Me Warning You.” It really showcases your vocals, but it must be a bit daunting without the power cords, and the wall of sound.
In the early times of this band, my mom would say ‘I’m having this thing at my work. Can you come sing some songs on the acoustic guitar?’. I’d say sure, and I’d show up and think ‘Where’s my backup? And where’s my volume?’ I’d just be really nervous about it. But over the last five or six years, ever since I bought a nice acoustic guitar, I’ve really leaned into learning how to sing better. It’s much nicer if you can actually just sing over an acoustic guitar.
I grew up on Frank Sinatra, that’s pretty much like one of the only things that my parents could agree on. So we listened to a lot of that stuff. During Christmas I’d bust out the acoustic guitar and sing them a bunch of Sinatra or some old country songs.
One day I wrote a song that sounded like that a bit, and I showed it to Kyle and I was just like, ‘I don’t really know what to do with this. It’s not really a Dirty Nil song’. And Kyle was just like, ‘Dude, this is totally you, so it’s a Nil song’. I was pretty taken aback by his willingness to include it because it doesn’t have any drums, and that’s when I really knew that we were onto something different with this record.
The Dirty Nil will be playing the Bronson Centre Sept. 20, 2025, with support from Cleveland’s Heart Attack Man, and Montreal’s Spite House. Tickets are $25, available here.
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