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Dilettante

Mar 27, 2025 By Andrew Tucker Leavis Photography by Kenny Watson Web Exclusive

It’s Dilettante’s first gig in the Midlands, and her most loyal fan has a herniated disc (these are rough times for discs, as anyone in the music industry will tell you). Those of us at the Bodega tonight are therefore drafted in to sing “Wish you were here, Tony” on a video recording to send to the absent supporter. Our well-wishing completed, the band launches into a raucous “Happy Birthday” for another fan standing uninjured behind me.

This is the personal touch you get from the Manchester music collective Dilettante, whose name might point you in the wrong direction. The term ‘dilettante’ brings to mind a dabbler, someone with a fair-weather commitment to their art, but this is a band whose dedication to their fans and their kaleidoscopic post punk sound is, on tonight’s evidence, pretty hard to question. ‘Dilettante’ comes from Latin - ‘delectare’, to delight - and, as the gig goes on, that definition seems closer to the mark. Dilettante is both the whole band and the pseudonym of singer-songwriter Francesca Pidgeon, whose writing and cool charisma holds the project together. If you’ll forgive me, Pidgeon has a bit of a magpie sensibility - hidden in the sound are Wild Beasts, Warpaint, even a dash of Billie Holiday. Having taken a supporting role in B.C. Camplight’s band, she’s peeled off towards a starring role, taking the front of the Bodega stage tonight with a steely forward gaze under a 00s indie fringe, a Manic Pixie Dream Terminator.

Blades of violet light cut through the dust upstairs and she cycles from sax, to flickering loop pedal, to electric piano, and even pulls off a rare triple-vocal-mic combo. Pidgeon seems to have several arms, but I did count them at two, which makes this all the more impressive. Built with this variety of instrumentation, the most recent record, Life of the Party, relies on its densely inter-firing arrangements, and I was curious how this would be realised live. The answer is that the band makes it look easy, but there’s absolutely no way that it is. This isn’t dabbling. The set rests on the quality of Life of the Party’s material, delivered tonight in its best light. With its see-sawing afrobeat rhythm, Fun does exactly what it says on the tin. Sipping from a ceramic mug while she sings, Dilettante serves up “To Make Me Good” with a living room nonchalance, as though ‘I’m getting good at giving up’ is a rueful thought she’s having in real time. The strongest beat in the setlist is “In The Taxi”, a story of skewed love whose diminished chords lift up a melody that builds from softness to glory. It’s also one of a handful of songs which have a sort of speakeasy menace running underneath them - you half expect the last chord to fade into a black and white Dashiell Hammett movie, or a shot of Daniel Craig glaring into a dry martini.

Some songs gain a new foothold in live performance - “I’m In Love With Falling In Love” is pleasant on the record, but scene-stealing on stage. As the rhythm section falls away and leaves just one voice and a piano, you’d hear a pin drop, or a magazine rustle a mile away. “Easy Does It” ends the set with a burst of adrenaline and a room-filling octave pedal solo. In its sum total, Dilettante is art rock fizzing with life and invention. Half a century after new wave first took Manhattan by storm, the band, fronted by a CBGB Zooey Deschanel, is making art rock as magnificent as the genre has ever been. The bar’s been set earlier by the quality of the two support acts. Mouse Teeth are grounded in post rock, a shimmering guitar holding up bright, alienated vocals, “a backlit screen on a lonesome bed”, with intervals for thoughtful spoken word poetry. Nottingham’s Lucy Crisp is a revelation - instantly addictive pop-writing, well-formed, delivered with a clear-as-a-bell voice. Upbeat synth arpeggios stand in contrast with Crisp’s frank lyrics when she sings “I’m in a hospital bed”, relaying to us her experience of cystic fibrosis. She performs as a two-piece with a guitarist, but the result sounds massive. As ever, the headliner sounds all the better when the whole evening pulls in the same direction.

And this is the sort of evening where you hit the pillow with a close harmony troubling your ear, and a renewed sense of hope for alternative music, too. Prognostication is always risky, but Dilettante has all the promise of a bright future; certainly there’s no danger of Pidgeon and co remaining in B. C. Camplight’s shadow. So, while Tony and his herniated disc have missed a peach of a gig, I’m sure the band will be back soon for a sequel. These are determined musicians, and they’re too good to dabble.