Packs Vinyl, CD & Tape 6 Items

‘Crispy Crunchy Nothing’ puts to rest any notion Madeline Link had about finding the end. Burnout, dead-end jobs, bike theft, stress dreams, heartbreak — Packs move forward through them all one line, one lick, one beat at a time, equal parts Alex G’s whimsy and Helvetia’s thunderous dynamics. Sticking together songs written in Toronto, Ottawa and Mexico City (while Madeline completed a papier-mâché residency), Crispy Crunchy Nothing revisits the fuzzy alt-rock of 2021 debut Take the Cake and adds some folksy twang to the mix for an album that explores the tension between independence and isolation, between living life to the fullest and feeling like you’re wasting your time. Influenced by country-tinged contemporaries like Renee Reed and Angel Olsen and Madeline’s lockdown-era listening sessions with her dad, of albums by Hank Locklin and Hank Williams. Crispy Crunchy Nothing is heavy, and Madeline makes little effort to hide the depths of her feelings. But after the rain, flowers peek up from the soil. “Laughing Till I Cry,” a reject from a commercial, recalls fond memories of spending time with her sister: “Sometimes, I feel like life is on my side.” And “Always Be a Kid,” jangling and swaying with the Nashville guitar in the foreground, keeps her chasing those smaller Matryoshka dolls, looking for companionship but settling for herself in the meantime. “So now, I feel alive,” she repeats, over and over again. And by the end, it sounds like she’s starting to believe it.

‘Crispy Crunchy Nothing’ puts to rest any notion Madeline Link had about finding the end. Burnout, dead-end jobs, bike theft, stress dreams, heartbreak — Packs move forward through them all one line, one lick, one beat at a time, equal parts Alex G’s whimsy and Helvetia’s thunderous dynamics. Sticking together songs written in Toronto, Ottawa and Mexico City (while Madeline completed a papier-mâché residency), Crispy Crunchy Nothing revisits the fuzzy alt-rock of 2021 debut Take the Cake and adds some folksy twang to the mix for an album that explores the tension between independence and isolation, between living life to the fullest and feeling like you’re wasting your time. Influenced by country-tinged contemporaries like Renee Reed and Angel Olsen and Madeline’s lockdown-era listening sessions with her dad, of albums by Hank Locklin and Hank Williams. Crispy Crunchy Nothing is heavy, and Madeline makes little effort to hide the depths of her feelings. But after the rain, flowers peek up from the soil. “Laughing Till I Cry,” a reject from a commercial, recalls fond memories of spending time with her sister: “Sometimes, I feel like life is on my side.” And “Always Be a Kid,” jangling and swaying with the Nashville guitar in the foreground, keeps her chasing those smaller Matryoshka dolls, looking for companionship but settling for herself in the meantime. “So now, I feel alive,” she repeats, over and over again. And by the end, it sounds like she’s starting to believe it.

‘Crispy Crunchy Nothing’ puts to rest any notion Madeline Link had about finding the end. Burnout, dead-end jobs, bike theft, stress dreams, heartbreak — Packs move forward through them all one line, one lick, one beat at a time, equal parts Alex G’s whimsy and Helvetia’s thunderous dynamics. Sticking together songs written in Toronto, Ottawa and Mexico City (while Madeline completed a papier-mâché residency), Crispy Crunchy Nothing revisits the fuzzy alt-rock of 2021 debut Take the Cake and adds some folksy twang to the mix for an album that explores the tension between independence and isolation, between living life to the fullest and feeling like you’re wasting your time. Influenced by country-tinged contemporaries like Renee Reed and Angel Olsen and Madeline’s lockdown-era listening sessions with her dad, of albums by Hank Locklin and Hank Williams. Crispy Crunchy Nothing is heavy, and Madeline makes little effort to hide the depths of her feelings. But after the rain, flowers peek up from the soil. “Laughing Till I Cry,” a reject from a commercial, recalls fond memories of spending time with her sister: “Sometimes, I feel like life is on my side.” And “Always Be a Kid,” jangling and swaying with the Nashville guitar in the foreground, keeps her chasing those smaller Matryoshka dolls, looking for companionship but settling for herself in the meantime. “So now, I feel alive,” she repeats, over and over again. And by the end, it sounds like she’s starting to believe it.

Toronto's Packs make music that's like leafing through a diary entry of a time without visible movement, a subtle beauty that appears only when paying close attention. The band's debut is a collection of songs that marry the loose but incisive jangle of early Pavement with the barbed sweetness of Sebadoh and the wide-eyed wonder of the first Shins LP. 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. "Take the Cake" is out on Fire Talk (Dehd, Deeper, Mamalarky) on July 9th 2021.

Toronto’s Packs make music that’s like leafing through a diary entry of a time without visible movement, a subtle beauty that appears only when paying close attention. A series of intriguing, lo-fi singles trickled out on Bandcamp, and on the strength of these demos alone the band began sharing stages with artists such as Odetta Hartman. Less a band that is a product of the internet than one whose quiet and acute observations make them impossible to be ignored, the quartet led by Madeline Link has carved out a growing space past the Canadian country lines where their initial demos were born. 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.”

Initially a solo songwriting project of Link’s that she pursued between gigs as a set dresser for commercials, the band blossomed into a four piece, composed of Shane Hooper (drums), Noah O’Neil (bass), and Dexter Nash (lead guitar). Anchored by Link’s voice, which brings such an easy charm to her songs that it’s easy to miss her keen ear for acrobatic vocal lines, together they turn Link’s melodically adventurous and introspective songs into the purest and brightest kind of indie rock. The band’s debut is a collection of songs that marry the loose but incisive jangle of early Pavement with the barbed sweetness of Sebadoh and the wide-eyed wonder of the first Shins LP. It will be released in partnership with buzzy Brooklyn label Fire Talk (Dehd, Deeper, Mamalarky), and Toronto mainstays Royal Mountain (Alvvays, Wild Pink, Mac Demarco).

It’s an enchanting record with a transportive quality. The songs communicate Link’s perspective acutely, with details that stand out in their specificity yet feel naturally at ease with melody and a loose charm that make the album feel timeless, like one that could have emerged from any of a number of “golden ages of indie rock.” Packs’ songs have a way of creeping up on you, and showing new depth with each listen. Be it a subtle harmony, a zig-zagging melodic turn, or Link’s lyrics, which wring a commandeering poetry out of every-day building-blocks as she navigates the growing pains that linger beyond adolescence — finding your bearings after a breakup, feeling directionless, processing loss. “My guts are wrapped in clingfilm / my guts are wrapped up tight / and if you’re going to put me in your backpack I will putrefy” goes a particularly arresting lyric on “Clingfilm,” articulately describing in Link’s own incisive language the alienating experience of dating after a break-up Each razor-sharp nugget of wry wisdom depicts its own scene of sonic touchstones: on the dreamy “U Can Wish All You Want,” she sings about moving in with her sister and struggling to adjust to living in the city around a neatly subverted butterfly metaphor, where on “Two Hands” she poignantly describes the eeriness of walking around the neighborhood she grew up in after the world has changed around it, while in the same turn referencing the Simpsons.

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. I also wrote and presented PowerPoint presentations juxtaposing the most disparate chain of research/ideas together to activate that part of your brain that’s constantly trying to make logical connections where 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.

Throughout the chaos of everyday life, it’s impossible not to feel charmed by Link’s innate understanding of the little things that make the universe tick, and her sonic accompaniments make the simple task of getting from point A to B a journey that lends a little more spring to your step. Most daydreams feel less realistic; in Packs’ world the two are just what you make it. As society begins to open back up, Take the Cake is a reminder that sometimes a little gentle introspection is all we really need to get by.

For PACKS, making a record isn’t a means to an end; the making of the record is a communal experience, bottled up for the public to hear. On third album Melt the Honey PACKS explores a state of contentment, even bliss, long elided. The self-produced record honors the unpretentious disaffection of the grunge movement and the inventive arrangements of Guided By Voices, whose prolific output has inspired PACKS since their inception. To make Melt the Honey, PACKS traveled to Mexico City, where Madeline Link had spent significant time as an artist-in-residence at Casa Lü. Over the course of 11 days, PACKS practiced new songs in a rented studio space. From there, they took a bus to Xalapa where they worked as artists-in-residence at a house known as Casa pulpo, an architectural feat removed from the bustle of city life. “The house has no straight lines, it puts you in a creative mindset,” Link says. Melt the Honey, is an outward-facing testament to the wonderfully strange details of daily life, vividly rendered by a songwriter who knows they’re worthy of reverence.