Toronto punk band Bad Waitress have released “I Only Like You When I’m Drunk,” the second single from their forthcoming album In The Hollow, offering another glimpse at a record shaped by shifting relationships, identity and personal change.
Released Oct. 2, the 2:47 track follows August single “Lovin’ Kind” and arrives ahead of In The Hollow on Oct. 30 through Stomp Records. The song blends art punk, garage punk, post-punk and noise rock while examining an attraction complicated by intoxication, discomfort and self-disgust.
New Single Turns an Uncomfortable Attraction Into Punk Tension
“I Only Like You When I’m Drunk” centres on the contradiction between being repelled by someone and continuing to feel drawn toward them.
“You horrify me / Make everything shit around me,” Kali-Ann Butala sings early in the track, setting up a narrator who remains caught between disdain and desire.
The tension is reinforced by Katelyn Molgard and Butala on guitars, Nicole Cain on bass and Moon on drums. The band builds the track around abrasive guitar work and a persistent rhythm as its central refrain repeatedly returns.
“I only like you when I’m drunk / I only like you when I’m fucked up and crazy.”
As the song progresses, its language becomes increasingly fragmented, eventually settling on the line “I’m fucked up on the decline.” The shift gives the track a sense of release without resolving the conflict at its centre.
Bad Waitress Build on Toronto Punk Roots
Bad Waitress emerged from Toronto’s punk scene with 2018’s Party Bangers: Volume 1 before moving toward a heavier and more jagged sound on the 2021 album No Taste.
The quartet has since developed a reputation for combining confrontational punk with humour and unpredictability. The band has performed alongside acts including Fucked Up, L7, Rise Against, Wolf Parade and The Bronx, while its sound has drawn comparisons with groups such as The Stooges, Fugazi and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
The new single continues that approach while placing greater emphasis on uncomfortable personal contradictions.
‘In The Hollow’ Reflects Five Years of Change
In The Hollow was recorded with engineer Josh Korody at Wychwood Sound in Toronto and produced by Bad Waitress.
The album follows a five-year period between full-length records in which the four members experienced different forms of isolation and personal change. According to material accompanying the release, relationships and memories began to take on different meanings with distance, while questions involving gender, sexuality and identity became clearer.
Rather than presenting those experiences as neatly resolved, the record focuses on the process of recognizing when relationships, behaviours or earlier versions of oneself no longer fit.
“I Only Like You When I’m Drunk” approaches that theme from inside an unresolved relationship. Its narrator has not reached a point of clarity or emotional distance, instead remaining caught between attraction and revulsion while using intoxication as temporary separation from the conflict.
Second Single Offers a Different Look at Upcoming Album
The track also provides a contrast with “Lovin’ Kind,” the album’s first advance single. While that song approached intimacy from a greater distance, “I Only Like You When I’m Drunk” places the narrator directly inside the emotional disorder.
Both tracks address desire and self-preservation, but the latest release takes a more volatile approach, emphasizing the lack of control surrounding the attraction rather than presenting a clear resolution.
That perspective is expected to form part of the broader themes explored on In The Hollow, which examines what people carry with them through periods of change — including old relationships, ingrained instincts and earlier versions of themselves.
With the Oct. 30 album release approaching, “I Only Like You When I’m Drunk” positions Bad Waitress firmly within the abrasive sound that has defined the Toronto quartet while expanding the personal themes behind its music.
The single is available publicly as of Oct. 2, with In The Hollow scheduled for release Oct. 30, 2026, through Stomp Records.