Pop punk band Hot Mulligan’s sophomore album you’ll be fine recently passed the first anniversary of its release. Most pop punk reminds me of summer to some extent, but you’ll be fine is the perfect album to listen to on repeat for summer 2021.
“OG Bule Sky” starts the album off with a catchy guitar riff and the scratchy, emotion-filled vocals of lead singer Nathan Sanville. The song is a mix of assorted emotions, all of them intense. In an interview with AltPress, Sanville describes this track as “a grab bag of old friends I’ve lost and family who’ve died back home without me noticing,” which reveals some of the depth behind the lyric “And now that house is filled with holes.” Despite the weight of raw emotion present in the album, the band doesn’t take themselves too seriously, as seen by the title of track two—“*Equip Sunglasses.” The vocals of this song are, again, truly fantastic, starting out intense and somehow increasing in power as the song continues. The drums in this song are also great, and possibly my favorite on the album. “Feal Like Crab” has an amazing contrast between some softer vocals against loud guitar and drums. “Dirty Office Bongos” is a rollercoaster, in the best way. “We’re Gonna Make It To Kilby!” has a fantastic buildup. One of my favorite parts of this album are the relentlessly imaginative song titles, if you couldn’t tell already.
“BCKYRD” is the song that got me hooked on this album, and my favorite as of right now. It’s a fast reflection on playing in the backyard as a kid, then growing up. The track is a great mix of angry and melancholy and includes multiple lyrics I haven’t stopped thinking about since I heard them for the first time: “Barely leaving a semblance of / What we thought it meant to grow up / When things don’t get better” and “Pay all your savings / To a debt that you didn’t know you had been living in.”
This is the best full album I have had the luck to stumble upon in years. Every song is fantastic as a standalone single due to the sheer talent of each member of the band, but also comes together to create the work of art that is you’ll be fine as a whole. I will be listening to this album religiously from now on and would definitely recommend it to anyone, but especially anyone who enjoys pop punk. As mentioned before, this album would be perfect to listen to over the summer. After all, what’s summer break as a college student without some existential crises about growing up?
