Sled Island and Exclaim! present: Hop Along and Bully with housepanther

Hop Along

 It’s no surprise that in 2015, Vulture named Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan “the best voice in rock music,” but it’s the sum of the band’s parts that make them such a special act. Alongside her brother and drummer Mark Quinlan, bassist Tyler Long, and guitarist Joe Reinhart, Quinlan has rapidly solidified her place as a must-see frontwoman leading a must-see band.

Following the highly underrated Get Disowned and three years of relative obscurity, 2015's Painted Shut put Hop Along on everyone’s radar and year-end lists. Existing at the center of Philadelphia's musical renaissance and the broader emo revival, it was as if the band was at the epicenter of a cultural moment. With 2018’s Bark Your Head Off, Dog, the band has proven just how alone they are atop the mountain of modern indie rock.

Bark Your Head Off softens the band’s punk influences, but sharpens just about everything else. The folk influence hinted at in their earlier work peeks through only to be suffused by electronic flourish. Still, Hop Along remains a rock band even if it’s the quiet moments that often have the most impact.

Of course, Hop Along will always be a vessel for Frances Quinlan’s aforementioned voice, but it’s her lyrics that often linger in your mind long after her thunderous wail has long since dissipated. Quinlan has the rare ability to write lyrics like a screenwriter. Her poetry is clever and cutting, with characters that focus on everyday minutiae in a way that gives meaning to the meaningless.
Still, even with their immaculate albums, the main draw of Hop Along’s work is seeing it performed live. With a near peerless run to pull from and a tireless work ethic that has made them one of the tightest live bands in America, Hop Along is not to be missed.

Bully

It would be easy enough to bill Bully as just another band doing ‘90s alternative rock with a modern touch, but to view the Nashville trio led by Alicia Bognanno with such a reductive lens would be a disservice to one of the most intriguing rock bands working today.
Born in Minnesota, Bognanno discovered her love for audio engineering and songwriting in high school. After working on demos and sporadic recording projects in university, she landed a sought-after internship in Chicago at Steve Albini’s legendary studio, Electrical Audio. It would be there that she would eventually engineer both Bully albums, 2015’s Feels Like and 2017’s Losing.

After settling in Nashville, Bognanno set out to finish all of the material she had written throughout university and her time in Chicago. With the help of guitarist Clayton Parker, bassist Reece Lazarus and drummer Stewart Copeland (not to be confused with Stewart Copeland of The Police), her introverted-hermit anthems explode with life. Fuzz-covered hooks rip through feedback squall like J. Mascis stepping out of a hotboxed Toyota Tercel.

One listen to either of Bully’s studio albums and it’s hard not to imagine just how big they would’ve been on MTV in its pre-millenium heyday. Bognanno’s voice is immediately reminiscent of a Cobain scream, but there’s a versatility to it that allows Bully to be more diverse than Nirvana ever were. Not to mention, her lyrics are less interested in the surreal grunge poetics of the genre’s beginnings, opting instead for an intimacy that belies the music’s explosive nature.

housepanther

housepanther makes power-pop that never revisits the same idea twice, yielding tunes so ceaselessly inventive they seem too good to be true. What grounds the band’s music is vocalist and songwriter Bailee Woods’ engaging honesty and vulnerability, creating a sometimes-awkward, always-beautiful rendering of the human experience. Woods recently collaborated with Montreal’s wrecker for a collaborative EP, featuring slower ballads but never sacrificing her lyrical bite.