BSH Saturday Music Club: ‘Painted Shut’ by Hop Along – Broad Street Hockey

Welcome to the BSH Saturday Music Club! Each Saturday (or Monday) we will be featuring one album that a Broad Street Hockey writer has chosen and given the rest of the staff to listen to and write their thoughts. This week, Thomas Williams has chosen the album Painted Shut from local Philadelphia act Hop Along.

As someone that grew up and really matured as a music appreciator – as horrible and corny as that sounds – when I discovered aggressive music and fully entrenched myself into hardcore as a little preteen, Philadelphia’s own Hop Along really came in and grabbed a hold of me so damn tight.

When all I wanted to listen to were bands like Gorilla Biscuits, Merauder, and Killing Time as a youngster, and then the modern bands like Harms Way and Nails; I stretched out just ever so slightly when Hop Along’s debut Get Disowned was released in 2012. It floored me, plainly. Hop Along is essentially a band with similar characteristics as the hardcore bands that I like and that was enough to make me fall in love with them.

The raw power and ultra dynamic range of Frances Quinlan’s vocals got me hooked at first. When they hit certain syllables with that guttural rasp it might be one of my favorite deliveries of a lyric ever. The way they are able to do this and then go powerfully quiet brings the same energy that drew me to hardcore several years prior. So when Painted Shut was released in 2015 as their sophomore album and follow-up to the successful Get Disowned it only entrenched me in their sound further.

Painted Shut opening up with “The Knock” and the first seconds being spent on Quinlan executing their range on just “8:45 a.m.” is just like diving headfirst into an Olympic-sized pool of timbre. The guitars’ overlapping riffs, the steady but almost jagged drums, and the bass thumping to keep a heartbeat through the support of Quinlan, provides such a strong opener to this album. Plainly, this one track might be why I prefer Hop Along’s sophomore release to their debut.

Lately, the phrase “written by hardcore kids” has been thrown around for new bands. Koyo is a pop-punk band “written by hardcore kids”, Gatecreeper is a death metal band that is “written by hardcore kids” – and while I’m not sure of their individual music tastes, Hop Along just feels like a mid-2010s indie/emo band that was written by hardcore kids. The energy is unlike any of their counterparts and the ability to deliver this intensity while not trying too hard and just inputting overt screams into their tracks make them so special. Plus, it only feels right to think about a Philadelphia-based band for one of the first editions of BSH Saturday Music Club.

-Thomas

Joe D.: Unlike Thomas, I am not much of a hardcore music guy–but like Thomas, I love Painted Shut. “The Knock” is just a phenomenal opener that sets the standard for the rest of the album: Frances Quinlan flexes their vocal variance (tender and cooing, ragged and raging), and they show off their songwriting chops.

Quinlan’s songwriting ability is what really stands out for me. Across the album, they makes visceral observations that ground the songs in tangible things (“Burned myself on this cast iron panhandle” in “Texas Funeral”) that elevate the storytelling and narratives they construct. These are often songs of failures and flawed characters, struggling in the face of whatever difficulties are in front of them. Peak Philadelphia music, really.

I listened to this album a lot when it came out in 2015, but hadn’t given it a spin in quite some time–aside from occasionally putting “The Knock” on TouchTunes at whatever dive bar I happened to be in. It’s still not a genre I find myself often delving into, but it was certainly a treat to revisit Painted Shut; it reminds me of lukewarm PBRs at basement shows in college, even though I graduated before this album came out. Simply put, Painted Shut rips.

Jacob: Hell yeah, I love a good indie band with a female singer. Painted Shut sounds like Philly, not Philly in a dated, Broad Street Bullies, Rocky II, type way, but in a new way. I’m not as entrenched in the Punk/Indie music scene as some of the others you’ll see writing in here, but this a damn good example of the genre at its best. Frances Quinlan has PIPES man, and a vocal range that really blew me away. Their voice is very distinct and carries so much emotion, they’re always at the forefront, and they have such a presence on songs like “Sister Cities” or “The Knock”.

This is some good stuff, I really enjoyed this album, this was a breeze to listen to, and it wasn’t garish and over the top like I find some Punk/Emo-adjacent to be. Just the right mix of musicianship and mayhem. I can definitely see myself listening to this again. 2/2 on quality thus far in my opinion.

Ryan Q.: Painted Shut is one of my personal favorite records from my college days. An old friend of mine suggested I check out “The Knock,” and after hearing Frances Quinlan’s signature howl on the track, I knew I had to give the entire album a listen.

After years of listening to the record, “The Knock” has actually been overtaken as my personal favorite track in Hop Along’s catalog. That title now belongs to “Horseshoe Crabs,” which features some of the best songwriting Quinlan has ever produced. And that’s saying something.

“Texas Funeral” also offers some exceptional storytelling, though, as Joe mentioned above. A track that drew inspiration from the 1963 film Hud, Quinlan sincerely asks, “Aren’t you sick to death of the word inheritance?” as their brother, Mark, who plays drums on the record, takes the instrumental lead. The track later concludes with a grandiose outro that serves as one of the record’s top highlights.

Painted Shut is a modern indie rock classic, and it frankly doesn’t get nearly as much love as it deserves.

Matt: This album comes from the period of my life that I would essentially call my music peak. In my 20s in Philadelphia, seeing live music all the time, trawling record stores—the whole thing. So I’ve seen the band in small venues like Johnny Brenda’s and at big festivals like Xponential, I’ve seen lead singer Frances Quinlan play solo shows, I’ve seen them open for larger acts. As a result, I’m intimately familiar with Hop Along and especially Painted Shut and putting it on this week felt like a perfectly broken-in baseball glove. It’s got warm guitars and the lyrics are at times idiosyncratic and beautiful, but it’s Quinlan’s yawp that really serves as the biggest draw. There’s such a sense of electricity in their enunciation, like you never really know where they’re going to go; the kind of thing that can make actors like Christopher Walken (at his best) or the Derry Girls lead Saoirse-Monica Jackson so engaging to watch. And then once you do know the intricacies well, it’s even more satisfying to hear them do it. Good album, good band.

Maddie: I think it’s kind of funny that Thomas made note that my album pick from last week’s discussion felt like something he would have gotten really into when he was in high school, because this sounds like something that I would have really gotten into when I was in high school! There are a bunch of pieces in this record that remind me of Candy Hearts, who I was indeed into in high school, so maybe there’s the tie-in. We love a full circle moment.

Anyway. What I found most immediately striking about this album was how relentless it was in its forward motion. Once it gets going, it can reach a pace that’s almost frenetic, and you’re just along for the ride. That sounds like it might be a little too much of an experience, but it’s really engaging.

Beyond that, personally I tend to be a vocals-first kind of listener, and with how gritty and magnetic Quinlan’s voice is, I found it really easy to be drawn into this record, on the whole. This isn’t a record that was really on my radar before, but I’m glad it’s been dropped into my lap.

Let us know what you think in the comments!