BAD INFLUENCE MAGAZINE

I saw Modern Dandelion completely by accident. I was headed to a screening at the TIFF NextWave festival, but after my streetcar got delayed, I ended up at Supermarket, a bar and small venue in Kensington Market, for Modern Dandelion’s show celebrating the release of their debut EP, Channels.

Modern Dandelion is a newer Toronto-based four-piece band. Self-described as “like The Cars, but not The Cars”, the band is led by creative force and frontman Zeki Toyata, 23, who formed the band shortly after moving to Toronto from Prince George, BC, in December of 2021.

On the formation of Modern Dandelion, Zeki says, “It was in the planning stages since my last band (Charcoal Heather) disbanded.” Charcoal Heather was Zeki’s last project in Prince George. “Basically, I was planning on bringing that band with me until we played a bunch of shows in our hometown. It meant a lot to a few people, and I was like, I don’t wanna ruin this because it’s kinda special, so I’ll just leave it as is and let it die on a high note.” Modern Dandelion is sort of a continuation of Charcoal Heather in various ways. Many songs were originally written for the Prince George project, but Zeki says he wasn’t able to achieve the sound he wanted for those tracks within that group. “Given that I wanted a keyboard, and that was a two-guitar band, it was kind of hard to teach everyone the songs.”

A new beginning

Zeki chose to move to Toronto due to having contacts here beforehand and because the music scene here is better than the one in Vancouver. Drummer Julian, 23, says that the music scene in Montreal and Toronto is where it’s at. “Toronto is definitely a city of immigrants. I think we import a lot of musicians and export a lot of music.” Julian also plays drums for a band called Wedding, which was one of the openers at the EP release show.

How Julian came to play drums for Modern Dandelion is a long story. “I met our first drummer on Vampr, which is like Tinder for musicians, and then I met our first keyboardist actually on Tinder,” Zeki laughs. “We jammed a bit with that lineup but never played a show. Then we got a new drummer, the first time we tried out our second drummer was at an open mic, and Julian was there with our keyboardist at the time and their band, Nanaimo Bay.” After the second drummer left the group, the band played with a drum machine for a bit. According to Julian, he saw them play a show with the drum machine and felt the need to step in. But before this, the band had another unofficial drummer. “We had another drummer who was there for a photo shoot and then never showed up again. We have a bunch of photos that we just photoshopped Julian’s face onto, but we only had one good photo of Julian, so it’s just the same photo.” Zeki explains.

He is the third or fifth drummer of the band, depending what you consider as an official drummer. If you include the drum machine and the guy who only showed up for the photo shoot, Modern Dandelion has had five drummers, but excluding those two, and according to the band, Julian is the band’s third drummer.

“It’s just the same picture of my head pasted onto all these photos,” Julian laughs. Having joined the band in October, Julian wasn’t involved in the recording of the EP, and neither was the current synth/keys player Mickey, 28. Mickey joined the band in August or September of 2022 after meeting Zeki at Microwave, an improvised recording project. Of the current lineup, bassist Scott, 25, and Zeki are the only two who actually recorded the EP with the second drummer, Jake.

Production styles

Zeki says he writes most of the songs and makes them into Garage Band demos if they’re good enough, and then it gets developed with the rest of the band. On the creative process and influences for Currents, they cite the sounds of the eighties as a huge inspiration. “With my old band, it was the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, generally the indie-rock kind of staples. But I was always kind of into the Cars and into like eighties kind of stuff, and with this record, it definitely came out.” Zeki says.

While many songs on the EP were written prior even to Modern Dandelion’s conception, one can imagine they ended up sounding entirely different than the initial demos. “It was actually supposed to be recorded more punk rock and mixed punk rock, but I showed it to one of my friends and they were like, you’re almost there, let me take a look at it. And then six months later, we released it.” In that six months, a lot of fine-tuning happened, and though it took longer than initially anticipated, the final release date ended up being premature. “Tommy, our producer, takes a long time. Eventually, I booked the EP show, and we were like, okay, we have a show coming up for the EP. We have to finish this before the show. We did kinda rush the mastering. It ended up really crushed.”

The vibe is in the visuals…

One of the most alluring things about Modern Dandelion is the thought they put into visuals, both in terms of graphic design and on-stage appearance. Zeki does all the band’s graphic design himself, and while he has contracted artists to do work for him in the past, he’s never ended up using it because it doesn’t look how the music sounds, stating, “I kind of came up with a design language that is in my head and nowhere else. When other people try to design posters for us, I look at it and I’m like, that’s not right.” He also sites a surprising influence for the cover design. “When I was first designing it, I was just looking at things around me, and IKEA has the grid pattern stuff everywhere, and I’m like, that’s a vibe. I’m taking that.” However, Zeki says they want to branch out graphically for future projects.

Julian says “The cover is very new-wave, eighties, Memphis, like, that kind of grid and purple and black, pink sort of style. Arcade floor, 1989.” The previously mentioned Strokes influence is apparent in the graphics as well. The album art reminds one of the album art for 2011’s Angles. When prompted on this, Zeki told me that a previous version of the cover looked a lot more to him like it. Pulling out a very cracked iPhone, he showed me the image, which indeed is even more similar to Angles, but also reminded me of the fretboard design from Guitar Hero. It is interesting to note how the influence of the Strokes and the 1980s combine in a way that one might expect to be similar to Julian Casablancas’ work with The Voidz, but Modern Dandelion is able to pay homage while maintaining an original identity and creating art that is undeniably different; from both predecessors and peers.

…and the energy.

On stage, they maintain a cohesive colour palette. When I saw them, they were all wearing black and white. The live performance is a very important aspect of being a band to Modern Dandelion, for both personal and professional reasons. Julian says the stage presence is a major key to a band’s success. “With shows in Toronto, even if you play a lot of fantastic music if you don’t have the stage presence, it’s... I wouldn’t say forgettable, but it’s not something that stays in your head. If you’re the worst band I’ve ever heard, but you’re doing crazy shit on stage, that’s definitely something people are gonna remember.” He adds that every gig is a chance for them to put on a better show than they did last time.

Zeki agrees about the importance of energy on stage, “Since I was a kid, I wanted to make experiences for people, and music is the most skilled way for me.”

Taking on Toronto

The highly-saturated Toronto music scene is tough to stand out in, but Modern Dandelion seems to be managing okay. When asked about the experience so far, Zeki says, “It’s harder than I anticipated. The EP show was the biggest show we’ve played in Toronto, and that was on par with the shows I was playing with the band in my hometown.” Zeki does admit that there is less competition in Prince George in terms of other bands, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here either. “Most people are trying to raise each other up. It’s a big enough scene where you can have beef with people and it’s kind of fun because it doesn’t really actually matter.”

When asked further about beef, Julian says they don’t have beef so much as preferences. “Some people we choose not to work with for interesting reasons, but it’s not like, beef, per se. We’re not shaking hands, saying fuck you.”

Zeki adds that they do have beef with the Toronto venue Tail of the Junction, explaining why they won’t be playing there again. “We did actually play a show there. We brought an entirely queer, mostly trans audience to the show, and I was telling people not to come. After we played, the venue owner was there and made some… not outright attacks, but generally transphobic comments, and it was just kind of uncomfortable.” Zeki notes that maintaining an inclusive space is important, and people should always feel safe at their shows.

In terms of the future, Zeki hopes to be booking gigs in June and July. While we clearly won’t be seeing them at Tail of the Junction, keep an eye out for them at other venues. They hope to be recording a full-length album come October, hoping for a release sometime next year, though Currents seems to be doing quite alright with a positive reception by most everyone who’s heard it. While the future is always uncertain for an up-and-coming band in the Toronto scene, Modern Dandelion’s futuristic retro style and upbeat tunes inspire optimism in a growing audience of devoted fans.

Keep an eye out for upcoming shows at their website, moderndandelion.com

Listen to their debut EP, Channels, here.