Dash & Will Pick You Up
You may be forgiven for not having heard of Dash & Will up to this point in time. You’ve been busy attending to things and whatnot, I understand. However, over the next few months your ignorance will become progressively more difficult to justify: If the hype can be trusted, Dash & Will are soon to be household names. Once that happens, and you subsequently realise that the girls are both only eighteen years of age, the temptation may be to brand them “overnight sensations”. I would advise against it. Seldom is that tag an appropriate or fair account of an artist or band’s rise to prominence; and a pertinent case in point is Dash and Will. The girls, whose real names are Charlie Thorpe (Dash) and Josie De Sousa-Reay (Will), first picked up guitars in 2002 and soon discovered a synergy between them that cannot be manufactured. Their song-writing careers began promptly, and with countless hours of hard work, they have been able to develop a distinctive pop sound (no, not an oxymoron) that is causing quite a stir around the country.
This year has been hectic, to say the least, for Dash & Will. After having completed year twelve mere months ago, the music has become priority numero uno. So far in 2008, the girls have signed to Mercury Records, through Universal, set about recording their debut album, sought and attained a drummer, guitarist and bassist and played a three week Rock the Schools tour of NSW. Let’s pick up the story from this point, shall we?
I’m sitting with the girls at Universal’s Melbourne office and I inquire about how Dash & Will are feeling about where they are at this point. “There’s a massive commitment to the music now, it’s a lot more serious”, explains Charlie. Josie, sensing that her band-mate’s response could be interpreted as somewhat downbeat, finishes Charlie’s sentence with “which is great.” At that moment I recognise the strength of the connection between the girls; they begin and complete each other’s sentences with a cohesion usually reserved for twins. And this translates directly and brilliantly into Dash & Will’s music: their tight vocal harmonies add the x-factor that many pop outfits spend all their days searching for.
Having played in front of five to eight hundred students each day for three weeks has given Dash & Will the experience and impetus to tackle the expectations of broader and more diverse audiences. “Doing it constantly for three weeks, you improve every day. You think to yourself, okay we have to improve on this and this and this” says Josie, of the NSW Rock the Schools tour. And with a whole host of shows in the next couple of months to support their first single, Pick You Up, it would seem that the experience recently gained was a wise investment. So then, it would seem an appropriate juncture to pose the question, what can audiences expect? “A lot of energy,” begins Josie enthusiastically, “we try and communicate as much as we can with the audience, vibing off each other” completes Charlie, mirroring Josie’s tone of excitement. The girls are aware that the pop nature of their songs allows them to create a party atmosphere whenever they play. “It’s really easy to get into them, because they’re pop songs. Audiences can immediately catch on to them”, explains Charlie. It’s clear that the girls’ biggest passion is performing the songs live, and it’s probably just as well; their debut record, “Up in Something”, looks set to be extensively toured once it is released in September. Along with countless radio and other media promotions, Dash & Will are in for a busy first year with their new label.
Pick You Up, Dash & Will’s first single, is a hint of the bright career that lies ahead for Josie, Charlie and their band. “It has all the elements of what we do in Dash & Will; it showed a lot of both of our personalities. It’s a bit poppy, a bit energetic and a bit chaotic”, says Charlie. “We really just can’t wait to get it out to people”, says Josie, again her enthusiasm measurable in bucket-loads.
So, has all this progress, in such a short space of time, proved overwhelming at all? “No, not really. This is what we’ve always had in mind, it hasn’t come as a huge surprise,” states Charlie matter-of-factly, but not arrogantly. “We just want to get out there now, and do heaps and heaps of shows.” Based on the buzz that surrounds the girls already, I’d say that Dash & Will’s hardly-containable ambition looks soon to be replaced by an exciting reality.
