Hot Mulligan

You'll Be Fine

Written by: PP on 15/05/2021 03:56:40

Did you ever wonder what would happen if you blend together Soupy from The Wonder Years and Parker Cannon from The Story So Far? Can it get more explosive in terms of emotional overload than that? Hot Mulligan's Nathan 'Tades' Sandville offers you a run for your money in that category on their sophomore album "You'll Be Fine". It's a record that roars on your face on all cylinders right away using "OG Blue Sky" as a deadly weapon: we've got mathy guitars that Damiera would be proud of supporting impassioned, volatile screams that feel like Sandville's throat is ripped into pieces as he tears through the lyrics. Few vocalists capture this type of passion on record, yet here Hot Mulligan are and deliver an emotional neutron bomb laced with technical instrumentation that by definition is the coolest record you missed last year.

You thought Parker Cannon was the epitome of emotion-on-your-face? Think again. Throughout "You'll Be Fine", Sandville tears into emotional charge like no one else I've heard to date. It's similarly melancholic and angsty as The Wonder Years but delivered with an explosive stop-start punch that leaves no one cold. It's no wonder these guys are snowballing right now because when you add in elements of math rock, all of a sudden you find yourself in the soundscapes of a band like The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die as you do on "Analog Fade ("New Bule Sky")".

Still, the band is at their best when their emotions practically smash all over the soundscape in what sounds almost like an unintentional side effect of playing their music. A song like "We're Gonna Make It To Kilby!" is a great example: it's hard to sit still while Nathan's coarse screams break through a pop punk soundscape with such urgency and immediacy. Just imagine this song in a tiny basement - it's the kind of material bands dream of writing where people are literally falling off the rafters onto the stage to scream along to the songs. It's the kind of a song that Florida's FEST was probably originally created to cater for. Think back to the original Taking Back Sunday records.

Yet if there's one critique to the record, it is that its highs are so incredibly high, and its lows are... well, still good, but more average in contrast. The best songs make you think Hot Mulligan is unstoppable and there's no chance to see them in tiny places anytime soon. The more laid-back, indie-flavored ones? Well, they sound derivative if I'm perfectly honest. So, consistency, basically. But given tracks like "Digging In" and "Feel Like Crab", or even The Dangerous Summer-esque "SPS", the truth is that "You'll Be Fine" is what you'd wish The Wonder Years had been writing lately. It's an album rammed with passion that not just spills over, but rather encompasses the entire scene in its honesty as an exemplary demonstration of what to do with guitars, emotive lyrics, and a little raw screaming for good measure. So excited to see what comes next for these guys.

Download: OG Blue Sky, We're Gonna Make It To Kilby!, Feel Like Crab, Digging In, SPS, Equip Sunglasses
For the fans of: The Wonder Years, Real Friends, The Story So Far, Knuckle Puck, Spanish Love Songs, Taking Back Sunday
Listen: Facebook

Release date 06.03.2020
No Sleep Records

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