by LE Francis
This was my final show of 2023 & at this point I’d honestly thought that I was probably done with this column. While I enjoy going to shows & talking about it with my friends, it can sometimes feel like pulling out my own teeth to come up with relevant things to say in an organized column, no matter how informal.
So, while my photography is never great – my now elderly Samsung Galaxy is not ideal camera gear – it was extra bad on this particular show because all of my pep for documenting my experience was gone & I was very buzzed to boost.
However, sometime early in the new year of 2024, I did an assessment of the column’s readership & decided that it seemed worth continuing for the time being as long as I could find some way to keep writing it. To accommodate my malaise, I made the decision to move to biweekly & only write about live music.
So in the unlikely event that I run out of shows to talk about, I’ll go on hiatus. That is not seeming likely this year. I’m already scheduled out to the end of August with the shows I’ve gone out to so far & have tickets for 7 more shows between July & mid November.
But back to the Hot Mulligan show — it was on December 8 in Seattle at Showbox Sodo. I live about 3 hours to the east of Seattle on the other side of the Cascades so anything between late October & early April can be dicey on the passes but I borrowed a car with AWD & made it over pretty easily. Coming back was another story, especially because this show ultimately ran pretty late.
Early on though, it was kind of the ideal set up – Showbox Sodo is in the very accessible Sodo neighborhood that has plentiful parking & reasonable traffic. There are a smattering of fun places to stop in before the show on the run of 1st Ave. — among my favorites: a Silver Platters record store, Shawn Kemp’s Cannabis if you partake, & Ghostfish Brewery, which I visited for the first time before this show.
Ghostfish has since become a favorite that I hit up anytime there’s a show in Sodo. It’s a gluten-free restaurant & taproom & as someone with celiac disease from east of the Cascades it’s an absolute treat. The prices are actually very fair for gluten-free fare & they have a lot of menu items that are rare treats for folks with restrictive diets — a variety of craft beers, onion rings, churros.
Showbox Sodo itself is probably one of the best laid out of the local venues in my opinion. There are two bar areas & the upper bar has some seating. The bathrooms are good sized & accessible from the upper bar. Staff at both Showboxes typically do a really good job keeping open space to move through the crowd even when the room gets full – something I cannot say for some of the shows I’ve been to at The Crocodile (though I love the Croc) & El Corazon (do not love El Corazon, no cute tho).
Ben Quad
Ben Quad is a post emo band from Oklahoma that shares a label with Hot Mulligan (Wax Bodega). & the vibes are similar in their studio releases. They have that shiny emo guitar sound, the chaotic, choppy vocal lines backfilled with layered melody. They have the lyrics that cut at themselves & everyone like them (everyone, don’t kid).
But to my ear, it leans a little more pop-punk. I think maybe it’s the way the vocals are mixed, the way the harmonic layers kinda pop up around the more emo main vocal line as if they’re buoying it.
& they leaned a little further into that sound live. There’s something of the production that pulls it back into a more emo-y sound but stripped down, it has a rougher, punk sensibility that could almost cut into you if it wasn’t wrapped in the sunny tone of the guitars.
I think of the three openers, Ben Quad was the one I thought I’d like the most. & though I liked Spanish Love Songs more than I thought I would, I was probably right.
Heart Attack Man
Heart Attack Man is a pretty cut & dry pop punk act out of Cleveland, Ohio. & as a former resident of the Dayton metro, I am automatically on the side of all Ohio musicians.
& Heart Attack Man offers a palatable catalog leaning in to themes of self-acceptance despite it all. Their choruses are big & vibrant & anthemic, but like it was with Being as an Ocean, this ain’t the band for me.
They put on a great show though & they could be the band for you, so maybe give them a listen if you’re a pop-punk fan.
Spanish Love Songs
This band has a unique sound — especially among this lineup. They remind me more of late ’80s/early ’90s pop, particularly the gothy, alt pop rock bands that had almost as tight of a hold on the pacific northwest as the more metal/punk-tinged bands the media would have considered “grunge” during that period.
Using bands I’ve seen in the last couple of years, they’re somehow part Silversun Pickups & part Korine. It’s a throwback to a sound that is a little pre-emo but still the absolute roots of it.
& their lyrics are as biting & emotional as you’d expect.
They brought a lot of the same vibes to the stage that you can find in their studio recordings. To me this is a tell that a band has really dug into their sound & has put time & effort into making their live show congruent with what they can do in the studio. & it was a great show & I definitely wouldn’t be surprised to see this band popping off in the near future.
Hot Mulligan
This was the second time I saw Hot Mulligan in 2023 but the last time I caught them was prior to “Why Would I Watch” dropping. & this run’s setlist was mostly from the new album with a few picks from “you’ll be fine” & older releases.
“Why Would I Watch” is like “you’ll be fine” in the way that there’s not really a bad song on the album. There are different moods & themes explored throughout but the whole thing is saturated with the frantic, emotionally-volatile energy of the band.
In writing, we talk about voice as something unique to a writer that they cultivate & no matter what viewpoint they’re writing in, there’s something of that voice that bleeds through & identifies them. It’s like the underlying vision in a visual piece, it doesn’t matter what medium or palate or whatever variation the artist may be working in – there’s something of the strokes, the composition that identifies the hand that crafted it. Hot Mulligan is one of a handful of bands that really defines this idea in music. I don’t find their music to be formulaic at all, in fact it’s got a very frenetic energy that seems to be everywhere & nowhere at once – but there’s something unmistakable about their sound that immediately catches your ear & pulls you in.
& the songs on “Why Would I Watch” both stand alone as great songs & dovetail into each other perfectly to create an album where you just can’t be bothered to skip a song.
It translates perfectly live too. Which is probably why the band seemed to blow up a lot in the wake of this release. I’m a reasonable person with a little bit of experience in live vocal performance & considering flawlessly landing even a third of these lines live evokes the sensation that my vocal cords may tie into knots. & I talked about this in my previous review but the lead vocals are definitely not written with “vocal saving mode” in mind. I just hope that lead singer Nathan Sanville has good practices in place because dude has to be one of the hardest working vocalists out there & the results speak for themselves.
Though I was antsy to get out & back over the pass, I couldn’t bow out even a second early. Ultimately, it was worth the risk. & this show was a fantastic end to my 2023 in concerts.
Verses on Verses is a biweekly music column from the perspective of a poet. Inquiries can be directed to LE Francis, lefrancis@sagecigarettes.com.
LE Francis (she/her) is the managing editor of Sage Cigarettes Magazine; a columnist & staff artist for Cream Scene Carnival Magazine; co-host & staff editor of A Ghost in the Magazine & The Annegirls Podcast; & the author of THIS SPELL OF SONG & STAR available through Bottlecap Press. She is a writer, musician, & visual artist living in the rainshadow of the Washington Cascades. Find her online at nocturnical.com.
