Content:
LYNKS lets the mask drop for their personal dance-pop debut, ‘ABOMINATION’.
Words: Ciaran Picker.
Photos: Mars Washington.
If an example was ever needed to show how far genre has broken down in recent years, look no further than Lynks. Ostensibly a dance-pop act, they’ve featured on tracks with punk-rockers Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes, toured with thrash-punk icons Amyl and the Sniffers, and featured on art-pop hero Christine and the Queens’ curated line-up for 2023’s Meltdown festival. On debut album ‘ABOMINATION’, all of these disparate strands combine to create a knockout record that will have you crying in the club, murdering the dancefloor, and calling your ex-situationship to see if they’re still up.
Lynks was born in the dark, sweaty corners of Bristol’s nightclubs, taking freedom, liberation, and a heaped spoonful of queer joy and smashing the concepts together, the result being something unlike anything else on the scene. Combining, in their own words, a “compulsive addiction to RuPaul’s Drag Race” and a sharply Gen-Z message, Lynks breaks the mould as the best (and maybe only) pop star to ever grace the stage in custom-made and gorgeously garish gimp suits.
‘ABOMINATION’ is the most intimate Lynks has been yet, exploring the sad dangers of London’s gay dating scene, inbuilt shame about their own sexuality, and fear that this fifteen minutes of fame is about to come to an end. It wouldn’t be a Lynks record, though, without a good slathering of humour, wit, promiscuity, and sickening floor fillers.
“It’s good that music seems to be working because I’d be a therapist otherwise, and I just can’t be serious about anything,” Lynks giggles, thus proving their own point. “The hardest moments in life are always the funniest for me; I guess you could say something like ‘tragedy is the richest well for humour’ if you wanted to.” It’s this inbuilt ability to turn negative situations to their advantage that has made Lynks so popular. That, along with the tireless work that the musician behind the mask, Elliott, put into making Lynks a success. “I wrote the album in 2022 in my bedroom and basically just sent it to a whole load of record labels.”
This process came with its own trials and tribulations, with their laptop getting stolen right in the middle of creating the album. “My two mottos are ‘trust the process’ and ‘don’t overthink shit’,” Lynks calmly admits. “If I live by that, then I can get over the moments where I’m like, ‘Have I fucked it?’ and focus on getting mentioned in The Guardian!”
Hard work and manifestations will only get you so far, though, and clearly, Lynks has that little something extra: talent. That’s why ‘ABOMINATION’ remains the same album that was created in a bedroom in East London. The most daring release of Lynks’ career so far, it is an avant-garde exploration of dance music, moving through hyper-pop, hip-hop, and trance, sometimes even in the same song. “Writing an album is so different to just singles. Not everything has to be on-brand; it’s more creatively free and means I can try on different personas.”
Across the course of the record, we travel from existential crises in ‘USE IT OR LOSE IT’ and title-track ‘ABOMINATION’, into lust-driven ‘CPR’ and ‘TENNIS SONG’, and through a Mean Girls-esque break-up anthem in the form of ‘NEW BOYFRIEND’. All the things that Elliott has been through, Lynks has allowed them to openly express themself for the first time.
“I’ve been thinking about that question, ‘Where does Lynks end and where do I begin?’, and I don’t really know the answer. It’s infinitely easier writing for other characters – I put the mask on, and I don’t care how I’m perceived because it’s Lynks. Perception is the number one enemy for creation.”
Elliott feels this especially deeply as an openly queer artist, with the whole album being rightly unapologetic in its wonderfully camp yet realistic view of life as a gay man in 21st Century Britain. “Lynks is honestly the best thing in my life because it’s allowed me to get closer to my friends and family, to just be me without trying to fit into all these expectations about how I’m supposed to act because of the categories that society’s put me in.”
Living an “unfiltered existence”, in their words, was not something that Elliott believed possible before Lynks. “I guess the whole mask thing is a literal part of Lynks, but also something I’ve always had on. I just thought that if I let that go, everyone would know who I really was.”
“I put the mask on, and I don’t care how I’m perceived because it’s Lynks”
lynks
Coming out, for want of a better term, is never an easy experience, one made worse by a persisting social view of what LGBTQ+ people ‘should’ be like. Through drag, Lynks is pushing back against these stereotypes that can be so damaging for young queer people. “Lynks has made me more open because I’m not trying to be hot or sexy; I’m just being real.” They continue, “There are all these views that queer people are all, like, narcissistic, or loud, or whatever. If Lynks can be those things, then I can leave that on stage and just act how I’ve always wanted to in my own life.”
It’s not that much of a surprise that Lynks has found themself so many fans amongst punk bands, really, with the whole point of the act to be unequivocally real, sadly still a radical stance in 2024. It’s why the record’s moments of introspection are so well-received, with the mid-album duo ‘LEVICTUS 18’ and ‘ABOMINATION’ speaking to a continuing homophobia within the world; discussion of homosexuality as a sin in ‘LEVICTUS 18’ is paired with the contrasting world of science in ‘ABOMINATION’, with Lynks setting their sights on the unequal world of healthcare through the rules of blood donation (“gay blood isn’t fit for circulation”).
As much as the sonics on the record are, on the whole, uplifting and designed to dance to, emotion is at the heart of this whole project. Hopelessness reigns supreme in the menacing backdrop of ‘I FEEL LIKE SHIT’, while the record culminates in the unstable and anxiety-centric ‘FLASH IN THE PAN’, a track that sort of sums up everything that this LP is trying to achieve.
“It’s really ambitious,” Lynks admits, “but I wasn’t going to overthink it because it’s the first album, and it is just real life. I have got this streak inside that tells me Lynks is going to be massive, but I’ve also got to be rational and realise that it might not happen. When this album got the green light, my first thought was, ‘Great, that’s bought a few more years!’”
The contradiction between optimist and realist is the album’s central ethos, carrying an incredibly raw and endearing quality. It’s this rawness, the DIY, grassroots feeling of the record, that makes clear how far Lynks can go, refusing to bend or break to fit into boxes they don’t want to be in.
“Perfectionism is the death of everything good in this world,” Lynks says poetically. “I made the decision early on that I didn’t want a sense of cohesion. Like with ‘TENNIS SONG’, it goes from being my favourite song one day, then the next I’m thinking, ‘What the fuck have I done?’’’ Stemming from the chaos of club culture, where misfortune and setbacks are greeted with laughter and bombastic side eye, Lynks was built to succeed within an industry that is always trying to knock you back down to size.
More than that, though, it means that they know how to put on one hell of a live show. Their UK tour kicks off in April and includes a stop at London’s KOKO, before travelling across the channel for their first-ever European tour. Lynks must be looking forward to it, right?
“To be honest, it’s amazing, but it’s really overwhelming,” they laugh. “I never think of people listening to my music; it’s just a lot of adrenaline and pressure.” Nevertheless, they promise something that you’re probably unlikely to experience anywhere else. “We’ve got choreography, we’ll have a really sick set, it is definitely going to be one of the best tours ever.” It’s hard to describe exactly what a Lynks show is like, especially now there’s label cash to splash, but in their words: “Imagine a Sugababes gig, but you’ve taken a whole bag of shrooms. Or a pop show that’s been put through a Nutribullet. Basically, you’ve got all the campery of Charli XCX, but people mosh.”
While chatting with Lynks/Elliott, it’s clear that they’re torn between two competing personalities; one that feels as though it’s all going to come crashing down and one that says they can do anything they want and is going to be a superstar. As such, it’s ambition and self-awareness that are Lynks’ most striking attributes and explain why they can blaze so bright without fizzling out.
Ambition does not equal arrogance, however, and they’re therefore cautious when asked about hopes for the year ahead. “It’s really tough because out of anything I’ve ever done, it’s Lynks that has had the most positive reception, so I’m fighting with myself to just set achievable goals.”
These goals include a television performance and a tentative nod towards that little festival known as Glastonbury. Always one to tease and entice, “I’ve got the sickest idea for a Later… with Jools Holland performance, but I’m not going to tell you what it is; you’ll have to wait and hope that I get on it!” At the moment, everything is coming up, Lynks, so that wait is likely to be a short one.
Equality is something we often talk about in music, whether in terms of racial and gender bias on festival line-ups, the fact that many music moguls are still straight, white men, or the commercialism that means working-class acts struggle to make it past their first live shows. Lynks proves why representation is so important on the scene. Taking their queerness, turning it up to eleven, and donning a luminous yellow tennis ball mask, they’re all the evidence you need to highlight that music is all about celebrating difference in any and all forms.
Lynks is burning bright, spreading like wildfire, and hotter than ever. ■
Taken from the May 2024 issue of Dork. Lynks’ album ‘ABOMINATION’ is out now.
==============================
Image
==============================
URL
==============================
Source
Dork
==============================
Full content
[#item_full_content]
Leave a Reply