Dragonette
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Dragonette

| MAJOR | AFTRA

| MAJOR | AFTRA
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This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"review"

“probably the best album of 2007…. No other album in recent memory has been so resilient and so persistently listenable over such a long period of time. It's difficult to recall a single day in the last six months we haven't listened to it, or at least bits of it.” - popjustice


"review"

"Songs packed with life, love and sex. They are what No Doubt would have sounded like had they continued the trajectory of their last album, or what Scissor Sisters would sound like had they continued the trajectory of their first." - Observer Music Monthly


"plug"

“our favorite new band. They're a little bit nu wave, a sprinkle of pop, a dash of electro and just totally rad. We LOVE!" - Perez Hilton


"review"

“a powerful Brit-inspired new wave sound, blending punchy electro grooves with sensational pop melodies in stunningly effective fashion” - Sunday Mail


"review"

"smart, sassy state-of-the-art pop… which simply demands to be heard with no waiting around."
- the Independent


Discography

ALBUMS:
2005 - Dragonette
2007 - Galore
2009 - Fixin to Thrill

SINGLES
2007 - "I Get Around"
2007 - "Take It Like a Man"

Photos

Bio

DRAGONETTE BIO

Dragonette’s sophomore album, Fixin’ To Thrill, takes the playful, campy, provocative electro rock-disco-cabaret-pop explored on its 2007 full-length, Galore, and arrives at a more defining sound, as heard on the lead single and title track. The album might veer into different directions, hinting at country on the sparking hoedown “Gone Too Far” or the clip-clop beat of the gentle “Easy,” but that’s the fun of this hyphen-worthy UK/Toronto band.
There’s the melodic pop-rock of “Pick Up The Phone,” a song about falling out with a close friend, and the acoustic folk to mounting carnival-key creepiness of “You’re A Disaster.” “Stupid Grin” comes complete with a chorus of people, age 9 & up, and “Funny Stuff” is cabaret-swing uber-cool.
Since the release of Galore and singles “Take It Like A Man” and “I Get Around,” Dragonette has taken control of its career, remaining on Universal Music in Canada but now independent for the rest of the world. This allowed the band, which includes drummer Joel Stouffer and guitarist Chris Hugget, to work at its own pace, pushing and developing the sound it started on its 2005 indie EP.
Writing began in Barcelona, Spain, where Martina and Dan escaped to woodshed. “That’s when we started grinding away,” says Martina. “We rented a little apartment there. It’s hard to work being in such as awesome place as Barcelona. We started two or three songs that are on the record. We’re not the most prolific people in the world so that was pretty good for us.”
The kick-off songs were “Get Your TTs Off” and “Stupid Grin.” Let’s address “TTs.” Yes, “TTs” means titties, and Dragonette knows — yawn — this groovy song will probably get attention just for the title, but how else to express getting some girl to back off your man? Do you say, “Please?”
“Obviously, I am who I am,” says Martina, “and sometimes I write a theme of a song because I think it’s a funny thing to put into a song. Like ‘get your titties off my things’ was a real sentiment I had — get your titties off my property (laughs). So, sometimes I think, ‘Isn’t it fun or funny or interesting to put things into a song in that language?’ but I guess sometimes people look at it one-dimensionally. I’ve always been blunt in terms of the language I use’”
“Fixin’ To Thrill,” the rockin’ title track and first single, was written as a call-out to Dragonette concertgoers from across theglobe - the U.K., Europe, North America and Australia, — even Santiago, Chile, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, where they discovered they had a dedicated audience singing all the words even though Galore hadn’t been released there. “Get on the floor/Don’t make a fuss/Just do it,” she sings. “It’s just wanting the audience to be on the same page as you,” Martina explains.
Self-produced by Martina, Dan, and another Dan, their friend Dan Grech-Marguerat, under their new production team moniker Black Wrappers, the tracks usually started by Martina and Dan working on the core of the song, then Joel fills out the drums (initially using a music program), then the final product takes shape in the studio. It’s more about building a song than demoing, they say.
“We actually set out trying to be less over the top than we were with Galore in terms of instrumentation, and then it kind of got away from us a bit, in some cases, like, ‘Oh yeah, cool, banjo!’” says Dan of “Gone Too Far.” “And the kids choir [on ‘Stupid Grin’] was just because we stacked a bunch of Martina and her friends singing those back-up lines, and we were like, ‘That’s a lot of Martina singing against everyone. Let’s get a bunch of other people to do it.’ The only other people we could think of was our neices and nephews. Those kids actually appear in our video for ‘Fixin’ To Thrill.’ But the one cool thing is, with the exception of those kids, this whole record was made for us by us, in our shitty little studio.”