Toronto art-punk band Bad Waitress has released “I Only Like You When I’m Drunk,” the second advance single from its upcoming album In The Hollow, as the group prepares for the record’s October 30 release through Stomp Records.
Released October 2, the 2-minute, 47-second track follows the band’s August single “Lovin’ Kind” and offers another look at the themes shaping the new album. Blending art punk, post-punk, garage punk and noise rock, the song explores intoxication, attraction and self-disgust through an intentionally abrasive and unstable sound.
The track centers on the contradiction between feeling repelled by someone while remaining attracted to them. “You horrify me / Make everything shit around me,” Kali-Ann Butala sings at the outset, establishing a tense dynamic that continues throughout the song.
Bad Waitress Turns Conflicted Attraction Into Punk Tension
Bad Waitress builds the track around guitars from Katelyn Molgard and Butala, Nicole Cain’s bass and Moon’s drums. Together, the musicians create a jagged arrangement that becomes increasingly chaotic as the narrator’s conflicted emotions intensify.
The song’s central refrain makes that perspective explicit: “I only like you when I’m drunk / I only like you when I’m fucked up and crazy.”
As the track progresses, its language becomes increasingly fragmented. The song eventually locks onto “I’m fucked up on the decline,” turning what begins as an uncomfortable admission into something approaching defiance and release.
That combination of discomfort and humor has become part of Bad Waitress’ musical identity. The Toronto quartet emerged from the city’s punk underground with Party Bangers: Volume 1 in 2018 before moving into heavier and more jagged territory with its 2021 album No Taste.
The band has since expanded its profile beyond Toronto, performing alongside Fucked Up, L7, Rise Against, Wolf Parade and The Bronx. Its music has also drawn comparisons to acts including The Stooges, Fugazi and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
‘In The Hollow’ Explores Isolation, Identity and Change
In The Hollow was recorded with engineer Josh Korody at Wychwood Sound in Toronto and produced by Bad Waitress. The album arrives after a period in which the band’s four members experienced different forms of isolation and personal change.
Those experiences influenced a record focused on shifting perceptions of relationships, memories and identity. Questions involving gender and sexuality also emerged with greater clarity during the years between albums.
Rather than presenting those changes as straightforward personal breakthroughs, Bad Waitress has focused on the more uncertain process of recognizing when previous relationships, habits or versions of oneself no longer fit.
“I Only Like You When I’m Drunk” captures that process from inside an unresolved emotional conflict. The narrator has not reached a comfortable conclusion or gained enough distance to view the relationship objectively. Instead, attraction and contempt exist simultaneously, with intoxication providing temporary relief from the contradiction.
That approach distinguishes the new track from “Lovin’ Kind.” While the earlier single kept intimacy at a greater distance, “I Only Like You When I’m Drunk” places the narrator directly inside a complicated attraction. Both songs address desire and self-preservation, but the latest release presents those themes through a more chaotic loss of control.
Bad Waitress Prepares for October Album Release
The forthcoming album marks Bad Waitress’ first full-length release since No Taste and reflects the changes experienced by the group during the five years between records.
Instead of presenting that period as a neatly defined transformation, In The Hollow examines what people continue to carry with them through periods of change. Old relationships, memories, instincts and earlier versions of identity remain part of the record’s emotional landscape.
“I Only Like You When I’m Drunk” offers a particularly unsettled example of that approach, combining confrontational punk instrumentation with a narrator struggling to reconcile attraction with disdain.
With the new single now released, Bad Waitress is providing another indication of the heavier and emotionally conflicted direction of In The Hollow ahead of the album’s October 30 arrival through Stomp Records.
