By Jase Walker
The weather is steadily improving and my walks to the venues around Manchester have finally moved from “resentful pilgrimage” to “pleasant walk” and on this occasion, to see a very new band to my ears, Hot Mulligan. Thanks to a good mate of mine who’s made no secret about how much he loves these guys I spied them doing a tour and couldn’t resist getting myself along to see how they rip it up live. Sadly my mate couldn’t make it today (boo!) but that’s never put me off going to a gig before so here I am for doors and ready for a night of punky mayhem.
For this tour they’ve brought along Arm’s Length who I don’t even recognize the name of but I’m always happy to check a new band out because you never know! A pretty humbling intro of them just walking on and doing a quick line check before saying they’ve come all the way from Ontario in Canada but they’re clearly buzzed that a bunch of people here know the words to their stuff! After the quiet intro, we’re in the thick of it and I’m feeling a lot more at home with their math rock/midwest emo sound, this is exactly what I came here for tonight and I’m already grinning from ear to ear at what Arm’s Length are doing.
It definitely seems that Arm’s Length were not expecting this sort of crowd response when embarking on this tour as their first trip overseas. The fact that a fair chunk of the audience are singing the words back and losing their minds is fantastic to see and the band are clearly humbled by it. This again is another massive reason why I always do everything I can to get down for support acts, sometimes you’ll come across bands that while you’ve not heard of them, absolutely blow you away with their live performance and Arm’s Length are one of those acts. An incredibly humble and earnest performance that’s been a wonderful experience from start to finish, it sounded great, they’ve had a ton of fun on stage and played to the audience in such a natural manner. I really hope it’s not long before I get to see them again, but give me a chance to learn the words though!
A similarly unceremonious walk onto the stage with a quick line check, Hot Mulligan get things started and errant pints immediately start flying everywhere and one ceiling-bound cup treats some poor sod to an alcoholic shower. Already no shortage of people being launched over the top to crowdsurf to the front, along with a strong chorus of voices shouting the words back at them. It’s always fascinating being in the middle of a room for a band that you’re still very new to, meanwhile everyone else is what seems to be megafans. I’m just enjoying a pretty good show that’s a lot of fun to watch and sounds pretty great, yet everyone around me is going mental like their life depends on it!
There’s something about this strained screaming over sparkly and bright guitar playing which has worked its way into my regular listening over the past year or so and seeing Hot Mulligan do their thing and get such a raw audience response feels like a very warm, comfortable experience to me. The bottom line for Hot Mulligan is just having a lot of fun though, and this is exactly what they’re delivering in heaps and from my comfortable spot in front of the sound desk, I can see all of the chaos unfolding amongst a sea of arms for every single song. At one point the singer politely requests the venue get someone quickly up to the front of the barrier to catch crowd surfers as he’d just watched two crowd surfers drop over the front and onto the barriers: good on him for caring around the audience safety!
All in all, what a wonderfully pleasant and enjoyable show, don’t get me wrong, I do love it when a gig goes at a million miles an hour with insanely heavy riffs but this sort of show has been one to remember. I feel getting into this sort of stuff recently has been a bit of a turning point in a change of my musical palette and I will do everything I can to join in with the singing next time I see these!
Great show.
- ‘Why Would I Watch‘ is released on 12 May.
- Hot Mulligan return to the ÜK in September:
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