Grady Strange - I Listen to Your Radio Show at Night

Grady Strange

Sid The Cat Presents

PACKS

W/ Grady Strange

10/20/2023 at Genghis Cohen

In March 2020, as the world dealt with collective uncertainty, Madeline Link was dealing with unthinkable tragedy on a much more personal level. Her aunt, Lori Tate, was killed in Seattle, a victim of a hit-and-run. Madeline was spending the early weeks of lockdown with her parents and sister in Ottawa, stuck grieving remotely in Canada’s capital city with no distractions and nowhere to go.

“Laughter was the only way we were able to get through it,” says Madeline. “It was just us four, and all of us would be able to be silent whenever we needed to, and laugh and help each other out and cry when we needed to.”

And while the specter of death looms over Crispy Crunchy Nothing and its brisk, folk-rock vignettes of loneliness, yearning and confusion, so too does Madeline’s sense of humour. It’s bone-dry, tucked within her drawling vocals, and buried beneath guitars that alternately sneer and twang. But it’s there, the album’s beating heart — a sense of purpose and unflinching resolve evident even in its title, taken from Madeline’s description of biting into a moldy apple.

“Some bear in a hat told me only you prevent the fire,” sings Madeline on “Smallest One,” the same song where she tears through a series of Matryoshka dolls trying to find the end, a philosophy that gets her through life’s neverending problems. “I was seeing life as this series of challenges where there’s always going to be another thing you have to worry about. In theory, the dolls get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. But there’s always going to be another one after the next one.”

This is an All Ages event.

Grady Strange

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