LIVE REVIEW: Hot Mulligan @ The Exchange, Bristol
Bristol’s 250-capacity venue is packed to the rafters tonight for a visit from Michigan’s pop-punk sensation HOT MULLIGAN. Considering the band’s recent run of earworm-y singles, it’s no surprise to see that Bristol’s alternative scene is abuzz with hype for this Friday night show.
But first up is Canadian emo outfit ARM’S LENGTH, performing their first-ever set outside of their home nation. Off the back of a viral TikTok clip and a positive review in Pitchfork, the Ontario outfit has gone from strength to strength in the last year, hailed by some as the next big thing in emo. And from tonight’s performance, it’s not hard to see why. The already-packed venue embraces the four-piece’s emotionally-charged rock, as they blast through anthems like Object Permanence and Tough Love, with a not-insignificant contingent passionately singing back every word. The lilting melodies of the gorgeous Watercolour fill the room with a wilful melancholy that transports every listener back to their teenage years and those formative first experiences of rejection and alienation. Garamond sees the room erupt with angst as this promising young act exit the stage.
Rating: 9/10
HOT MULLIGAN might just be the quintessential emo band right now. While their sound might be more broadly grouped under ‘pop-punk’, their sound is an amalgamation of almost every influential sound that has emerged within the subculture over the last decade. They’ve got it all: the twinkly guitars, yelped screamy verses, soaring choruses, and plenty of gang vocals. But the most important ingredient is one that HOT MULLIGAN has in spades: sincerity.
Opener Drink Milk and Run, an ode to being broke and directionless, and is delivered as if it were their last show, with Nathan ‘Tades’ Sanville bounding around the stage screaming his lungs out with little regard for the health of his vocal cords. The dancey chorus gets the whole crowd moving and things only get better from there.
Shhh! Golf Is On touches on that most pop-punk of themes – hating your hometown. But it’s a testament to HOT MULLIGAN’s songwriting chops that their take on this common idea feels so fresh. The lines “there’s nothing special in the water here/there’s no reason you should feel the need to stay” take on the feeling of a battle cry as almost every voice in the room rises to scream along with this recently released track.
If there’s a complaint to be found, it’s that there’s not a great deal of variety to the band’s schtick, which is why the softer ballad BCKYRD hits so hard. Its gently strummed chords allow the cacophony of voices to take centre stage for the emotional climax of the night. The catharsis of this gorgeous ballad seems a fitting note to end on, allowing tonight’s fans to expel every last bit of angst they might have been storing up inside.
Tonight and this tour as a whole feels like big moment for HOT MULLIGAN. With this run of sold-out shows and their third album on the horizon, it feels as though they might be about to launch into the stratosphere.
Rating: 9/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Bristol from Serena Hill Photography here:
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