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 Toronto-based artist Eva Link of the project Triples.
Originally formed as a duo with her younger sister Madeline Link (PACKS) on drums, Triples was a force, glimmering and carefree, singing rock songs that beamed with playful melodies and distortion that tangled up loose harmonies like a knot of twinkle lights. Their last full length was 2019’s Big Time, where songs of growing pains became something like a pillow fort with a sturdy foundation; a commemoration of what it meant to be disheveled, curious and imaginative in hindsight of everything you now know. Last year, Eva released “So Soon”, the first new Triples track in a a handful of years, offering a blast of both energy and sincerity; returning to the ruckus, where dance parties are scheduled because you know they’re good for you and where laughing so hard you snort through your nose is the most genuine sign of endearment.
About the playlist Eva shares;
I like to take my dog on walks in this big forested park near my house and it’s so sublime in the fall when all the leaves start to turn, the sidewalks are wet, there’s a little chill in the air. When Autumn comes around I always feel more introspective and moody and love to indulge in those feelings by listening to a playlist like this while wandering around Toronto. This playlist is a combination of 90s shoegaze-y songs, melancholy folk, and experimental indie rock that I thought all had a similarly wistful tone that would pair well with a misty fall time moment.
In a telling glimpse of both devastation and redefined beauty, Toronto-based artist ZINNIA, the pen name of Rachael Cardiello, shares “Always A Romantic”, the next single from her upcoming album, Dollar Store Disco, set to be released February 7, 2025. Described as a divorce rager, Cardiello searches for self-preservation and joy throughout the record, as “Always A Romantic” echoes within the hollow feelings of solitude and the comfort lead by newfound clarity.
Like the weight of heavy eyelids, “Always A Romantic” drifts into a soothing moment of stillness, blurring out the world as an absorbing piano fluctuates with intensity, animating only what we can feel around us. Although the instrument is isolated in this rather spacious track, the singular voice that it leads becomes the benchmark for retainment and release as Cardiello’s powerful vocal range explores the room. “I really thought I was a romantic / I really thought you were worth it,” she sings, reflecting on a once fulfilling relationship now broken and fading with a tender and soaring performance.
About the song, Cardiello shares, “‘Always A Romantic’ arrived years after the wreckage of my divorce from the quiet of a hard-fought-for stability. There is a stickiness in letting a new truth settle into your body when you believe another story to be true. There is an almost physical whiplash of coming to terms with, and integrating that change.”
“Always A Romantic” is accompanied by a music video, both filmed by and starring Oriah Wiersma. In a decaying house, flashing hints of a once connected appearance, what is left becomes a search for the stories now lost, only to live within the people that once called it home. “When Oriah and I talked through possible movement for this piece, I kept returning to the way Ginger Rogers used to bend back in Fred Astaire’s arms when they danced. How she was so terrifyingly open and malleable amidst the dips and twirls,” Cardiello shares about the video.
Watch the music video for “Always A Romantic” premiering here on the ugly hug.
Dollar Store Disco is set to be released February 7, 2025 via the Montana tape label Anything Bagel. Preorders of the record will be available this Friday, October 11.
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 Toronto, Ontario based artist Kenny Boothby of Little Kid.
You don’t have to sift far in our small music world before coming across Little Kid’s latest record A Million Easy Payments. Released earlier this year – their first via Orindal Records – Payments resonate with such ease, mirroring that of which passes us by everyday and reflecting on the moments often lost and forgotten. As an interchangeable and collaborative unit, Little Kid builds out from their textured and uncompromising folk stylings, beautifully capturing that triumphant feeling of making it through another rough day while still looking forward to the next. To accompany his playlist, Kenny shared a blurb about how these songs came together;
For the past three summers, I’ve been able to spend a few days completely alone on a solo camping trip. Nothing too impressive – I set up a tent and make a fire in a provincial park, with a cooler full of beer and hot dogs in my car – but the solid dose of alone time is so healing. I’ve found camping has a therapeutic aspect for me, in the sense that my only goal each day is to think about what I want or need to do in any given moment, and then do it for myself (this is helpful because as a teacher I spend most of my days monitoring and responding to other people’s needs and wants).
I also listen to a lot of music on these trips. I thought it’d be fun to make a playlist of the stuff I have come back to the most over these past few summers. Neil Young and Florist each show up twice on the playlist because those are the two artists I tend to spend the most time with on these trips. Nothing beats Neil and a beer, and those last couple Florist albums have an unparalleled quiet to them that fits so well when you’re surrounded by forest. Hopefully these songs can help someone else find a little peace and calm during these last few weeks of summer.
Triples is one of Canada’s best-kept secrets. With an emphasis on loose and energetic DIY performances, the band has put out some of the most heartwarming and fun pop songs in recent memory. Today, the Toronto-based project of songwriter and actress, Eva Link, has released her long awaited new single, “So Soon”. As a follow up to 2019’s debut full length, Big Time – an album with no shortage of glittery attitude and loveable hooks, Link returns to her form more confident than ever, with powered up, jangly guitars and an enduring melody that reminds her to embrace what she knows best.
Triples has always gravitated towards a nostalgic feel – taking inspiration from 90’s alt-pop legends like Guided by Voices and Liz Phair, as well as that underground punk charm that is both invigorating in spirit and timeless by nature. “So Soon” showcases the band with a more expansive, rock-forward sound, but at no loss to the heart and pure enjoyment that comes with Link’s songwriting.
“Whose guilty conscious keeps them hiding away/ Fear of fucking up with things you say,” Link sings, as a steady guitar introduces the song – a batch of open ended doubt setting the scene. It doesn’t take long before her layered harmonies become responsive and the driving drum fills and heavy guitars turn the song into a pop-rock classic, as “So Soon” reaches for that joy of embracing what fills us up.
“This song is about coming out of a hibernation, where you’re just used to feeling bad or sad, and then reemerging into the world and remembering what it’s like to feel like yourself again doing the things that made you feel happy, actually doing the things that matter to you (the “cool and right things”) you recognize the YOU that starts to come back,” Link shares about the song.
“So Soon” is accompanied by a music video shot by Seamus Patterson at Paste Studios back in 2023. The video plays with a coming-of-age feel, as the band rocks out in a twinkle lit garage, capturing a new and exciting step forward for Triples.
Triples will be performing with PACKS (Eva’s sister and frequent collaborator, Madeline Link’s band) at the Drake Underground in Toronto on July 6, and look to release their forthcoming EP in the near future.
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 Toronto-based artist, Maryam Said of poolblood.
In April, poolblood released theres_plenty_of_music_to_go_around.zip, a short collection consisting of two new tracks and a live recording of previously released song “twinkie” at tibet studio records. Following the release of their debut album, mole, poolblood has become a project of sonic exchange, shifting between ingenious instrumental layers and heartfelt folk structures that seep in with such warmth and enjoyment.
Along with the curation, Said shares a statement about the playlist:
“These are songs I’m currently spinning. I was moving earlier last month and settling in to my new place and had these songs to set the tone. I’ve always viewed music as a family, and it’s been the only constant thing in my life that shows up for me in the way I need it to. These songs are mix of songs that remind me of what it’s like to switch course, greet a new season and relief sigh.”
“Oh wait, one more fun thing,” Link gasps as she jumps up from the couch and quickly exits the frame of our Zoom call. Right before our chat, her band PACKS released their new single, “HFCS”, along with an accompanying music video. Self shot in Las Vegas with Link’s trademark fisheye lens, the music video is as dizzying as it is addictive; notably dead-on considering its environment. With a knack for charmingly clever music videos, Link embraces the concept of low-budgeteering into her own style of sharp simplicity and pure enjoyment. After a minute or two, she returns to the call screen with a huge grin and an enormous pair of spy goggles covering most of her head. Playing with the long magnifying extension, bringing out her right eyeball to unforeseeable proportions, she tells me that she is getting everything ready to shoot another video, this time spy themed, for the song, “Missy”. Set to play a daring spy and her counterpart arch villain with her awesome new prop, Link’s genuine excitement couldn’t be wavered.
Madeline Link and PACKS have had a pretty productive past year. With the release of 2023’s Crispy Crunchy Nothing, PACKS redefined the bleak and mundane in the name of charming fixations and fuzzy rock sedation. On top of that was a month-long U.S. supporting tour with Brooklyn rockers, GEESE. Looking into 2024, after a mainland Europe tour, the Toronto band just released their highly anticipated second album within a year, titled Melt the Honey. On a break between tours, Link called me from her family’s home in Toronto, where we got a chance to catch up, discussing her first European tour, recording Melt the Honey, and the stories that she has strung along the way.
The sound that PACKS has led over their career is a collaborative and textured style of unpolished garage rock, anti-folk and the barebones of pop exceptionalism – spread out within a controlled burn of fuzzed-out clamor. But before the formation of the band,it was just Link. “I was making music in high school by myself, and I was just writing because that’s what I wanted to do when I got home.” Having played in a few bands with friends, as well as the jangly-pop duo, Triples, with her sister, Eva, Link was attuned with collaboration, but always placed an emphasis on a song’s personal and structural roots. Without a consistent band to play with, “I was writing songs so that I could perform them solo and they wouldn’t sound that different,” she tells me. But with the serendipitous addition of members Noah O’Neil (bass), Shane Hooper (drums) and Dexter Nash (lead guitar) to PACKS in 2021 allowed Link to comfortably take her vulnerable tunes into denser stylistic territories. With a great deal of trust, Links reiterates, “when I got the band, I would write the songs on my guitar, with maybe only a drum beat in mind, knowing that the guys would have really cool ideas for it”.
With that all being said, that creative premise rang incredibly true when PACKS was billed to support Slow Pulp on a full European tour at the end of 2023. As our call was a week before her departure, Link tells me she was headed over to the mainland, not with her guys, but as a two piece; her boyfriend taking the role of programming drum beats. Looking beyond this hurdle and relishing in the excitement, Link comfortably admits, “this is closer to what PACKS originally sounded like” – acknowledging the leap to that early and vulnerable style she had planned for. “It’s cool, now that we’re practicing for the Europe set, to just hear that the songs can take on any form that they want to.” She continues, “the song can live as many lives as it wants.” When asked as to how she interprets these new formations without embellishment to their meaning, Link admits, “it comes from not really having too much of an iron grip on any of the elements of the song.” As a wide smirk crosses her face, she sneaks in, “variety is the spice of life.”
Over a professionally tedious eleven day period, the band traveled down to Mexico City, rehearsing hours on end, to culminate what would eventually become Melt the Honey. From there, leaving behind the bustling center, the band took a bus to Xalapa, the capital city of Veracruz, and home of the notorious Casa Pulpa. Rumored to be commissioned by an ambitious grandmother as a place for her grandkids to play, the house, a cornerless entity, became a working home and studio for PACKS to record their new songs. As an architectural feat – an oddity – “It’s honestly a really dangerous place,” Link laughs, almost still in disbelief. “Me, Shane and Noah were sleeping on these platforms that were 14 feet above the concrete floors,” recalling the super tall echo chamber type rooms. “And then they have these poles that you take to get down. Or I think at least mine did, I don’t know if the other guys did,” she says, humored in the image of their gravitational struggle.
These anomalies – an intriguing combination of environmental and equipment failures – only led to what would be Melt the Honey’s greatest strength; its calloused individuality. With the utmost minimal recording equipment, Melt the Honey’s sound remains an established force, with each member’s personal aesthetic baked in. “We rented a drum kit from the only guy that rents drum kits in Xalapa, and we didn’t even use any clicks,” Link says. With the inclusion of various field recordings; a strong Xalapa storm, a love-tempered cat, recording goofs; Melt the Honey is a genuine relic of the time spent making it. “We just performed,” Link recalls. “I just played along for every take. It was a bit grueling after a while, but it was just a lot of fun.”
Photo by Eva Link
Melt the Honey finds the band presenting their laurels in traditional PACKS pageantry – but where it differs from other PACKS projects is its unapologetic trust, both as a band as well as in Link’s personal life. As listeners, we can easily find resonance within a PACKS song – deliberate in relatability, wit and charm in the face of loneliness and personal bummers. But now face-to-face with the project, Link affirms, “it’s not like writing sad songs is the only thing that I do. They’re the songs that tend to have heaviness to them, and so they’re the ones that are fun to play and expand upon.” On that note, she continues, “anything that I’m saying is buried under so much metaphor. I always try to encode things and distract you.” Before we both start laughing, she demonstrates with hand motions, “this is how bad I’ve been feeling for a month, but here’s the chorus.” On past projects, Link’s wording was meant for coping – distancing herself from her most troubling affections. But with new endeavors in her life, most notably, falling in love, Link’s quips and anecdotes have a lighter duty to them. A counterweight – specifically, Link makes clear, “it’s underrated. Well, I think maybe underrated is unfair to say, because artists are usually just quite sad, and they just can’t write happy songs.” She takes a pause, before saying, “I feel lucky that I get to write these songs.”
As Link and I continued our interview, lapsing my line of questioning to sharing stories; her art residency in Mexico City, the criminal Canadian/US visa cost (which I bravely took the heat for), and the time a drunk kid at a PACKS show tried to convince the both of us that I looked just like Hobo Johnson, Link’s excitement for sharing experiences was undeniable. “I find that I can move pretty slow,” she admits. “I process things pretty slowly, and I feel like I’m kind of a slow person. It’s like truly experiencing what is happening. It’s just part of the fun of being alive and I think every single thing that I experience allows me to have a wider perspective.” Going back to, “variety is the spice of life”, Melt The Honey feels like an embodiment of that particular spice that Link has used before, but this time around it feels purposefully heavy handed.As the boldest project of hers to date, redefining comfort in her style and in the direction her life is headed, Melt The Honey blends this new pronunciation of joy with the fixations of the things that she’s come to cherish; a new love, a passion for creating, the opportunity to do it with her friends – and all-n-all, a new pair of spy goggles to show for it.
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