PACKS Find Beauty in Abandonment on New Single “New TV”

Toronto rock quartet PACKS, led by singer and songwriter Madeline Link, will release their debut album Take The Cake via Fire Talk Records and Royal Mountain Records on May 21. They announced the record in mid-March alongside “Silvertongue,” which landed on Paste’s list of that week’s best tracks, and now they’re back with a second single, “New TV.”

Where “Silvertongue” was an immediately hooky fastball over the middle, “New TV” is more of an off-speed pitch: Over shaggy guitar chords and Shane Hooper’s shambling drums, Link ponders the gaps in perceived value through which commodities can slip, finding a kind of kinship with the abandoned objects that find themselves on city streets and sidewalks (“I think it’s shaped like a body / It kinda looks like mine,” she sings of a tossed-out couch). Dexter Nash’s lead guitar shines through here and there (particularly on a mini psych-rock outro), but “New TV” is subdued and brief, a passing glance at something left by the wayside.

“I got the chance to witness a Craigslist transaction of two bros selling a hideous pink couch to an eager young man with a U-HAUL,” Link explains in a statement. “As they lovingly demonstrated the LA-Z-BOY function, everyone seemed pretty impressed. New TV boxes and old couches litter curbs every garbage day. This song goes out to other people’s garbage.”