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 ju
