Hot Mulligan - You'll Be Fine [Indie Exclusive]

Hot Mulligan released You'll Be Fine in March 2020, which is about the worst possible timing for a record built around the promise of playing it live. The Michigan band spent the following year watching an album that should have put them on every stage in the country sit still instead. It found its audience anyway.

The songs are why. Tades Sanville sings in a register that sits somewhere between a shout and a crack, and the band write around that voice rather than smoothing it out. "OG Bule Sky" and "Feal Like Crab" pair genuinely bleak lyrics with the most euphoric music on the record, which is the emo trick done properly. "Analog Fade (New Bule Sky)" and "BCKYRD" slow things down enough to make the payoffs count. The famously misspelled song titles are a running joke that stops being a joke about three tracks in.

Five years on, this is the record that gets credited with dragging Midwest emo out of the basement and into rooms with actual capacity limits.

Indie exclusive coloured vinyl reissue on Wax Bodega.