Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by the Louisville-based band, PARKiNG.
PARKiNG, the trio of Lizzie Cooper, Boss Benson and T. Moore, create music that is harsh, and gloriously so. The band’s debut LP, PORTRAiTS, released one year ago this month, feels as timely as ever in the hum of western collapse. Defunct, distressed, observant, surreal, but human; PARKiNG home instrumental fixations to combat the dead ends, algorithmic lashes, and the has-beens and the has-been-nots caught between our ever-separating formalities and devotions. And through the searing noise, the breaking infrastructure and melodic demands, PARKiNG builds a podium but declares no winners. Rather, the young band offers refuge in the complexity of these songs, giving space to fill when isolation and unease absorb our world, and pushing us to each take a step up and get a better look at what’s ahead.
About their playlist, the band shared;
“Influence and praising others expression has opened our eyes to glance out at the majestic vast sea of artistry and the waves of construction that follow. Like a sculpture we have become carved and engraved with the strains that passed through our cores. Attend to with intent.”
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Braeden Long
Across the country, on a mission from the highest order, young pop song swooners and DIY consumers embarked on a journey down to Durham and Carrboro North Carolina to be a part of history. Returning for its second year in a row, The Big Pop Show, held March 20th-23rd, was a four-day fest put on by friends Nathan McMurray, Lilian Fan, Eli Schmitt, Annie Vedder and Charlotte Kane.
Beyond the live music, BPS also hosted a discussion panel that interrogated ethical ways of engaging with art and sustaining the local communities involved in its creation. The Panels were “Beyond Aesthetics: Art, ethics and individual responsibility in times of political unrest” and “Airwaves to Algorithms: Technology, artistic consumption, and the economy of attention”.
With the help of Averi Love Little, we collected photos from Braeden Long, Kian Kermani, Shannon McMahon, Chance Venable, Audra Barbieri, Finch McGowan, and Emily Burrows, as well as quotes from the artists and organizers involved, to capture the joy, friendship and the resounding community that prospered at The Big Pop Show 2026.
Kellen and Susie of Good Flying Birds by Chance Venable
Handstand by Braeden LongCharlotte, Lilian, Eli, Annie, Nathan by Kian Kermani
“the big pop show meant everything to me. i was there for all 30+ sets and film screenings and i still feel like i missed out. there was an incalculable amount of magic and energy in the air. i could see the connections and friendships forming before my eyes, and there is nothing that makes me happier than to see people in joy, in love, in hope and empowerment together in space. every single set was some of the best music i’ve seen from these artists, and never was there a moment of envy or competition, only pure inspiration.” – Eli Schmitt (Organizer/TV Buddha)
Eilee and Evren by Kian KermaniDonkey Basketball by Averi Love Little
“Disregarding the boatloads of brilliant sets, the late-late Saturday Night / Sunday Morning Cookout parking lot tailgate was a sight that will never escape my memory. Practically hundreds of freakazoid losers like ourselves lost en masse into the quesadilla-quesadilla-quesadilla tray madness alongside a particularly great hang.” – Isaac Lowenstein(Donkey Basket/Lifeguard)
Van Goth by Chance Venable
“It felt like summer camp! I guess playing in a wooden room cemented that feeling, but so did all the amazing people from all over the country meeting in one place” – Sydney Salk(Van Goth)
“We have a lot of electronics and had to play a stripped back set with the minimal sound system – but somehow this got a rowdy bunch of young people to watch silently. Within 30 minutes sweaty mosh pits had broken out in the same room. These people were here for the music.” – Simon Schadler (Van Goth)
Piper + Kathleen by Audra BarbieriPaige by Kian KermaniPaper Jam by Braeden Long
Arm Wrestling by Kian KermaniTouch Girl Apple Blossom by FinchMcGowanLizzie by Audra Barbieri
“The Big Pop Fest has always been almost like the central point to a much larger community. It feels almost like one of those detective boards, where we could take string and connect all these bands across the country to each other and the commonality would be Pop Fest. On the surface level I would say it’s been a joy to watch so many talented artists perform and has been truly transformative for me as a musician; but on a much deeper level, it has given me some of my best friends in the world. To feel understood completely by your peers is a truly special thing and I think if nothing else, that’s one thing I gained from my years there. There is absolutely nothing like it, and honestly I don’t know if there ever will be. I’m just glad I’ve been lucky enough to witness it for myself.” – Lizzie Cooper(PARKiNG)
The Sourdrops by Shannon McMahonHenry and Braedenby Emily Burrows
“It was a grand get-together of pop heads, new and old. Many fun times were had. The second nights after party had the floor of the Duke Coffeehouse bouncing to the beat of Donkey Basketball. It is really awesome that we all got to share that weekend with everyone that was there.” – The Sourdrops
Nathan and Dad by Braeden LongLillian of Little Chair by FinchMcGowan
“My favorite memory was probably watching PIPE play, they are great friends of ours but also local legends of the triangle that I look up to. It was wholesome to dance with everyone at like a truly all ages show. Also the panel on Sunday at coffeehouse was great! Highlights were discussions around what it meant for art to be political beyond just making overt political statements, and when John Davis from folk implosion was talking about the importance of engaging with artists in real life through the merch table etc. it was awesome.” – Lilian Fan(Organizer/Duped/Little Chair)
“The whole thing was like a controlled explosion – I think Nathan and Eli have this magnificent ability to grasp the whole network of spectacular projects working right now. Streamlining it all… And our set was absolutely visceral. We played on the ground and I’d look up sometimes, see people on their hands and knees in front of me. I felt like everyone in the room could read my thoughts and their movements were responses. It was really so special.” –AJ Bond (Instrument)
“For me, it was really the moment right after I got back from the Pop Fest, I was listening to the Red Xerox Tape Expo on YouTube and going through the comments. You should read the top one if you haven’t, it summed up my feelings pretty well. Some guy from Montreal.” – Lu Bond (Instrument)
“Grass lawns with fashionable people sprawled out, welcomed us to The Pop Show. Friends from different states reunited and many new friendships blossomed around each corner.
Cole opened our set with handstands as I beat his drum. It was sanctuary to smile, a place to dance, a place to connect – what a lovely time it was!” – Angie Willcut(Artificial Go)
“Pip Says Relax” by Kian Kermani
“There was something very serene and meditative about the entire event. I was expecting a lot of rambunctious and mania, but the heat combined with the length of the show, where all of the bands started to blend into another and conversate with each other’s performance, created this ease and content that cradled our performance really well. Everyone was sat down, and engaged, I could feel the impact and the fact that people were taking something from our show, there was a true exchange.” – Kali Flanagan (Superfan)
Braeden Screenprint GFB by EmilyBurrows“Let’s go swimming” by Shannon McMahon
“Big Pop was fun as hell! Massive respect to the organizers. House party after show was like a movie, someone was walking around with a ‘Big Pop’ cake while we we’re hanging by the fire – that was a memorable moment.” – Jake (K9)
It’s the end of the summer. The moon is uncomfortably warm, the air is stale and still, and it’s so thick you could cut right through it. The late August nights bleed together with machine-like efficiency, and in the atonal drone of the remaining cicadas’ final chirps, an intangible feeling of intense dread swarms all daring enough to step out into this unforgiving night. The drive home is white-knuckled. The hypnotic glare of oncoming traffic engulfs the reddened retinas of the late-night travelers. The machine whirs. It feels as though everything might come crashing in at any given moment.
PORTRAiTS, the debut full-length from Kentucky-based art-rockers PARKiNG, captures this unforgiving sense of dread, unease, and mania with haunting accuracy. Its sprawling and oftentimes politically charged sound is a perfect fit for the ledge, for the cusp of collapse, and for the dreadful isolation of twenty-first-century America. Spanning ten tracks and clocking in at nearly forty-five minutes, ‘PORTRAiTS’ features pulsating post-punk explosions, haunting orchestral abstractions, and fresh takes on the last half century of art and noise rock.
‘Siren’ starts the record with Frankie T. Moore and Lizzie Cooper’s hypnotic, driving rhythm section. They’re accompanied shortly thereafter by Boss Benson’s guitar, which dances in the nostalgia of late 70s UK post-punk. Moore exhales over the sprinting track as he shouts one of the album’s defining decrees, “Feed into the sirens/Everyone knows the silence.” As the song chugs, it grows more manic, more disjointed. Benson’s guitar growls and shrieks in feedback, Moore’s wails grow more pressing, and Cooper’s bass never relents. The song crescendos into a swirling wall of sound around Moore’s non-lexical vocables.
Immediately following is ‘Thirds,’ a quasi-sung-spoken art-rock track that features the first of Moore’s manic, drowned-out narrators. Moore rambles his dissatisfactions and disillusions over Cooper’s stabs and Benson’s beautifully shambolic guitar. The monologue wanders and backtracks through conversations about the plausibility of a higher power, distressed linens piling up, poor reading material, and frustrations with socially constructed hierarchies. Its verses read like a dejected manifesto on disillusionment with the general state of well—just about everything. The singular glimmer of hope amidst the disillusionment is shouted in the chorus; Moore empathizes with our collective frustrations and isolation as he shouts, “It’s not your fault you’re out of place.”
These frustrations are further explored in ‘Lantern’ and ‘Mike Johnson is a Mechanic,’ two of the album’s most politically driven songs. ‘Lantern’ drives and bounces like a lost Joy Division track. Moore’s frantic drums are reminiscent of Stephen Morris, and Benson’s jagged guitar reads like an amped-up Bernard Sumner riff. ‘Mike Johnson is a Mechanic’ is one of two songs with leading vocals by Cooper (the other being ‘Statements’). Her blasé delivery paired with the
dancey instrumentation creates the record’s catchiest song and one of its best. She encapsulates the recurring thesis of frustration, taking political aim at our inherited issues and apathetic leaders, saying, ‘Once more/I’ve grown so tired.’ Moore maniacally shouts beneath her, and Benson shreds the record’s catchiest riff.
‘DSGN’ and ‘Observation’ are two more extremely well-crafted songs. The band proves that not only does it have something to say, but it can also produce extremely catchy and well-engineered tracks. ‘People Running Madly to Some Kind of Monolith’ is the first of two orchestral tracks. The ghastly whines of Moore’s violin, cello, and bass haunt the three-minute runtime until it dies out into swirling static and feedback. The white noise bleeds crimson into ‘Monolith,’ a seven-minute post-rock exploration of mania, dread, and delusion. This is the record’s defining piece.
Chains rattle, Cooper’s bass stalks, Benson’s bowed guitar screeches, and Moore begins his sleep-deprived, haunted narration. Moore begins speaking of his premonitions, ones so vile and so filled with dread and hatred that he “can’t bear to watch.” Benson’s guitar moans in eerie notes, and Moore pounds his drums as his narrator grows evermore paranoid: “The lies brought to attention by no one of importance. Lies that I have brought to my own attention.” He stands beneath a nauseating night facing an unknown crowd, putting us face-to-face with one of his delusions, “The wind is dark/Their eyes all glistening in the rather unpleasant but warm moonlight.” He reads this exhausted and indifferently as if trying to justify and cling to his remaining sanity.
Moore’s mania grows, and the instrumentation follows; it feels as if everything might collapse in on itself. With one final attempt to retain his sanity, he shouts the thesis for the album’s mania, “I fear/I fear what I fear might not be real.” It’s not enough clarity, and the hysteric instrumentation—the mania—overtakes Moore. Benson’s guitar screams as he bludgeons it, the drums frantically sprint in every direction, and Cooper’s bass and backing vocals loom over the volatility like the “dark wind.” Moore shouts nondescriptly, but he’s silenced by his own mania.
It plays like the score to a lost Edgar Allen Poe text. Perhaps much of the record does. ‘PORTRAiTS’ deals in mania, but the issues its narrators face are very real and very pressing. In a culture and country where isolation and extremism have spread like a common virus, ‘PARKiNG’ offers a complex take on 21st-century America that is uncompromising and blunt in its horrors yet hopeful in its anthemic refrains. Maybe amidst all this dread and unease there is comfort; maybe that comfort is simply that it isn’t all our own faults. ‘PORTRAiTS’ is the announcement of a band that can craft intelligent, ornate, and catchy songs. Their voice is distinct, urgent, and sincere.
PORTRAITS is now available anywhere you find your music. Tapes are available on the band’s Bandcamp.
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