Packs Release New Single “Two Hands”

Toronto band PACKS, will release their debut full-length Take The Cake, on May 21, 2021 via Fire Talk Records/Royal Mountain Records
PACKS "Two Hands"

Toronto band PACKS, will release their debut full-length Take The Cake, on May 21, 2021 via Fire Talk Records/Royal Mountain Records. Ahead of the release, Packs have shared the single “Two Hands.” “This song is quite literal!” Link recently told NYLON. “On the walk home with muddy shoes and a light, almost delirious feeling in my chest that only stomping around in the mud can bring, I started humming the tune and the lyrics followed. A walk can transform your outlook on life, whether you are enraptured by a sunset full of colours only imagined in cartoons, you receive a sweet acknowledgement of existence from a stranger, or you get into a yelling match with a raving skeletor.”

PACKS was initially a solo songwriting project of Madeline Link that she pursued between gigs as a set dresser for commercials, the band is now a four piece, composed of Shane Hooper (drums), Noah O’Neil (bass), and Dexter Nash (lead guitar).

Written in two different settings, between the city limits of Toronto where Link was living in 2019, and the Ottawa suburbs where she was quarantined with her parents in the spring 2020, both remain complementary emblems of self-reflection and wry observation of the mundanity of daily life.

“The album is a meeting of old and new,” says Link. “Old songs from a year ago where I’m having really horrifyingly awful days at work, getting doored while biking in Toronto and flying into the middle of the street, or going on dates with guys who I’m either instantly in love with, or who end up creeping me out a bit. Those songs are more packed with that feeling of hurtling-through-time-and-space-at-breakneck-speed, manic energy. The newer songs are infused with a foggier, slower-paced disillusionment, and deal with the strangeness of a reality morphing before my eyes every day. I still try to be optimistic obviously, but these songs are really glorified coping mechanisms.”

Recently completing an artist residency in Mexico, Link’s aptitude and enthusiasm for a myriad of multidisciplinary subjects all trickles back to her overarching approach towards the subject matter she ruminates on in her songs. “While in Mexico, I constructed paper maché objects and documented myself destroying them Ialso wrote and presented PowerPoint presentations juxtapos chain of research/ideas togetherwhere there are none.” Call it world-building on a miniature scale: a more apt way to describe it would be a careful collaging, making sense of catastrophic loss and tiny signposts that point to something greater than the sum of its parts.

Packs
take the cake
Tracklist
Royal Mountain/Fire Talk Records

1. Divine Giggling
2. Clingfilm
3. Two Hands
4. New TV
5. Hangman
6. My Dream
7. Hold My Hand
8. Holy Water
9. Silvertongue
10. Blown By The Wind
11. U Can Wish All U Want

Pre-order Take The Cake by Packs HERE

Advertisement

Looking for something new to listen to?

Sign up to our all-new newsletter for top-notch reviews, news, videos and playlists.