HOT MULLIGAN & BEAUTY SCHOOL
Time to get emo-tional in a hot and heaving Waterfront
Waterfront
Not to be confused with the electro-pop group of the same name featuring Rachel (Fluke) Stewart, James (EMF) Aitken and Justin (Suede, Elastica, JAMC) Welch, openers BEAUTY SCHOOL is a six-piece emo-adjacent band from Leeds.
Featuring members of bands with “unfinished business”, only lead singer Joe Carrera is named in the publicity material. The sound is melodic with similarities to A Wilhelm Scream and Spanish Love Songs, albeit less intense than the former and less bombastic than the latter. The show is energetic, with a fair amount of jumping around and hair flailing. Beauty School get an enthusiastic response, with everyone around me enjoying their set, seemingly even including the four lads who chunter their way through every song before clapping and whooping like loons.
Hailing from Lansing, Missouri, HOT MULLIGAN have been around for ten years and three albums. There’s been a few line-up changes in that time but it has been pretty constant since 2016: Nathan “Tades” Sanville on vox, Chris Freeman on guitar and co-lead vocals, lead guitarist Ryan “Spicy” Malicsi and drummer Brandon Blakeley. Jonah “Fantasy Camp” Kramer filled in on bass from 2022 before becoming a full time member of the band this year.
To be honest, I am a touch surprised that not only are Hot Mulligan playing downstairs - rather than upstairs in the Studio or at Voodoo Daddy’s - but that this show is a sell out. That’s nothing against Hot Mulligan, just my (lack of) knowledge of them. They are greeted like homecoming heroes when they take to the stage. In just over an hour, the band tear through 19 songs. A good proportion of the crowd sings along word perfectly from opener How Do You Know It's Not Armadillo Shells? through to set closer John “The Rock” Cena, Can You Smell What the Undertaker.
Both Nathan and Chris are engaging frontmen. There’s plenty of movement on stage, with Chris in particular given to frequent spins. The playing is tight and despite being - in his words - full of West European illnesses, Nathan is in fine voice. There’s something strangely heartwarming in the crowd engaging in a chant of Piss! Piss! Piss! in response to one of Chris’s tales and it is all good fun. Enjoyable as it is, it doesn’t entirely grab me. To me, certain members of the band seemed as if they are going through the motions - maybe that is down to the illnesses or maybe it is just that I am knackered before I even arrive and the venue is both crammed to overflowing and very hot? Whatever, whilst neither band won me over enough to part with any cash at the merch desk, I’d quite happily see either of them again.
