Released last October, Begonia’s Fantasy Life is a charmingly peculiar pop album, one that traverses through various moods and atmospheres, blasting the listener’s pleasure receptors one moment and tugging on their heartstrings the next.
At the helm of this project, of course, is Alexis Dirks, the colourful and charming Winnipeg-based singer-songwriter, whose soulful and richly textured voice adorns these songs with a glossy sheen while imbuing it with an irrepressible sense of heart.
Across 13 songs, Fantasy Life paints a picture of a woman in flux, tracing the messy highs and anxious lows of stumbling into one’s 30s, of being in love and letting go of the past.
“My life is this balancing act,” Dirks tells The Grind. “I just oscillate between feeling all the terrors of the world that make me want to retreat and never leave the house, and then feeling like every day is a precious gift from above, which makes me want to get up and live life to its fullest.”
“[Fantasy Life] is also the first time that I’m really leaning into the mundanity of singing about being in love long-term,” she adds “What is most interesting to me today is these mundane moments, and learning how to farm meaning from them.”
Here’s the rest of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Congrats on your nomination. How does it feel to be recognized by the Polaris jury for this project?
It feels amazing. This album means so much to me. And being recognized for artistic merit, rather than for sales or whatever, that’s the ethos that makes Polaris extra special.
You also made the Polaris shortlist in 2023 for the album Power Blue. Do you feel like this is your year?
You know what? I am never the person that’s like, “this is my year.” That’s just not how I operate, that’s not my kind of self-talk. Of course I would love to get some [singing voice] money. It would be very helpful for me right now.
At the same time, I had such a great time at Polaris [in 2023]. I met so many cool people. I had such an amazing experience, that I didn’t feel like a loser at all. Also seeing the stacked shortlist this year — Tanya Tagaq and legacy artists like Beverly Glenn-Copeland — I just like, I’m cool. I’m cool with losing [laughs].
How would you describe Fantasy Life to a first-time listener?
This album is a proof of life for me, in many ways — proof, to myself, that I’m gonna do this for the rest of my life. Conceptually, it’s about being an aging woman in the industry, to continue on as someone who’s over 30, and a reminder that life doesn’t end there. It’s about being yourself to the fullest, about not being afraid to express what’s going on in your life, regardless of whether it’s pretty or ugly or whatever the fuck it is. It’s about opening up conversations around what it means to live. Honestly, I don’t fucking know [laughs].
There’s definitely a real range of emotions and subjects on the album. There’s “So High,” which is a dreamy track about getting stoned to escape your problems, and there’s “Out of My Control,” which is a love song about navigating anxieties about having children. These are heavy subjects, but they are not heavy songs, necessarily.
I struggle with different mental health issues, and so playfulness and humour is a big part of how I get through life. It’s this fine balance of being playful but also trying to take things seriously. We need that in the world right now, though that doesn’t mean we can’t also be nihilistic or sad or needing to be like “fuck the world” sometimes. These feelings can all exist at the same time.
There’s definitely a through-line from your earlier work to Fantasy Life, but I’m curious how you’d describe the evolution of Begonia.
I definitely feel like this is the teenager album. Like, my first album [2019’s Fear] is a sort of “baby emerges from vagina, what is this world?” [2023’s Powder Blue] was like, “toddler shitting in their diaper, figuring some stuff out, being like, fuck you, mom.” This one is late teenager being like, “you know what? I’ve been through puberty, I know shit now.” That’s what this feels like to me.
That’s a very colourful description.
Yeah, well [laughs].
Click here to read our interview with 2026 Polaris Music Prize nominee Aquakultre
You have this really distinct, incredible voice. I imagine that comes with some pressure to write big ballads, or to stick to a safe sort of soul or R&B sound. But this album really is a smorgasbord of genres and styles.
I was interested in tapping more into the pop sensibility for [Fantasy Life]. On my first two albums, I was really focused on avoiding making love songs or a ballad, because I was concerned about being boxed into [a certain style]. This time around, I didn’t have that fear. I felt like I had already proven myself, so I was, like, I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want. This album felt more free, hence the smorgasbord of it all. We’d start a song, and whatever it would turn into, we wouldn’t overthink it or try to contain it. We weren’t worried about trying to fit it all together. It was like, “no I’m the glue that puts it together,” rather than a specific genre or sound.
But yeah, ever since I started singing, I was compared to Adele, and kind of put in that sort of box, which happens to many women with a voice like mine. But especially because I am plus size — or like, not straight-size, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. I’m fat, and I don’t care [laughs]. That used to like insult me when I was more insecure, but now I see that people are literally just trying to compare you to someone they’ve heard that they think is great, and that’s flattering as fuck!
Adele is a talented artist!
Literally! And I get to decide if I want to be like, “fuck that,” and let that limit me. But I’ve come to accept that that’s a very narrow way of accepting that compliment. Or I get to be like, “hey that’s fucking awesome, she rocks.” but yeah, and I’m doing my own thing.
Do you have a favourite track on the album?
I love singing “So High.” It feels very grounding for me because it’s not necessarily about drugs. It’s more just about my oscillation between deep despair and being like who gives a fuck, to really caring about every detail of every moment.
“Flying” is also quite significant. I had a pretty formative and traumatic relationship in my early 20s that I have tried to process in every album that I’ve ever written since it happened, and I feel like that track is me genuinely moving on for the first time. Basically, the first album was like well you fucked me for life and I guess I’m fucked, while the second album was still fuck you, and there’s an underlying sadness. With this one, some weird-ass angel landed on my shoulder and was like “Time to say goodbye! It’s finally over!” It was something that I desperately needed to move on from, and “Flying” was the best I could articulate it.
If you were a Polaris juror, what album would you champion?
Every album on the shortlist is so good — when they announced it, I was like “shit, oh shit, oh shit, that’s good!” Beverly Glenn-Copeland is the GOAT, but I have also been listening to Charlotte Cornfield’s [Hurts Like Hell] like wash, rinse, repeat every day, even before the Polaris Prize shortlist was announced. I feel very fortunate to be among these people, and I truly didn’t expect it.
Richie Assaly is one of the 200+ music experts who make up the Polaris Prize Jury.
