Warm, Fuzzy, Hazy Love

From the mind of Madeline Link and the collaborative efforts of the people around her, Toronto-bred indie rock group PACKS delivers their newest full-length effort, Melt the Honey, a colorful and luscious experience. Comprised of 11 tracks that rarely outstay their welcome, each listen deepens the experience of the previous one, with new aspects to notice and appreciate with each iteration.

There’s a physical reaction to the music that PACKS has created for Melt the Honey. The music emits a heat as it radiates through the speakers, through the body and straight to the heart. When writing music for the album, Link describes the writing process while being in a stable relationship, figuring out what love means to her. In an interview with Paste Magazine last month, Link describes the experience like this: “Every single day is a new thing that I learned about what it means,”. Throughout the album, Link is able to emulate this experience musically in a myriad of ways – melodically, harmonically, lyrically and in ways that transcend musical terms, making sense only in the emotions and feelings received. In tracks like “Take Care” and “Her Garden,” Link describes these feelings verbatim with lyrics like “With me, I don’t take care, but with you I will, I swear” and “All my calluses are cravin’ fever dreams about you.” When listening beyond the surface, other tracks resonate with the same warmth albeit by other means, like how the instrumentation on “89 Days” feels like a sunlit walk through a garden. On yet another level of prosody, PACKS is able to emulate this feeling visually through their album artwork. Much of the time the artwork that accompanies the music is an afterthought, but in the case of Melt the Honey, the hues on display when first presented with the album act as a perfect prelude to the experience that awaits you.

Through copious different sounds and textures, PACKS puts the listener in a trance and keeps them there while effortlessly flowing through different vibes from track to track. Although ever-changing, the track list never strays from the colors that it establishes early on and gently moves the listener from perspective to perspective. Some tracks back-to-back can seem like polar opposites, like going from the hypnotic and mystical “Honey” to the earthier “Pearly Whites.” Yet, there’s so much to appreciate and to admire that the shift goes relatively unnoticed. Some of the most enticing sounds heard through the album’s instrumentation include the thick guitar octaves and crunchy chords in “Hfcs,” the unconventional chord progression and slippery slide guitar on “Paige Machine,” and the sleepy unstable chords that slide toward another in “Trippin.” It seems like, through her emotional journey, Link has poured herself into the creation of Melt the Honey and delivered an entirely organic experience that (no pun intended) links herself to her audience in an overly authentic way.