Ho Ho Hot Mulligan Is the Best Concert Present We Could Ask For
We’re gonna call them “Hometown Boys” despite all of the locations in Michigan that Hot Mulligan hail from. Pushing forward the genre of Emo, the band Hot Mulligan presented their Christmastime mini-festival, Ho Ho Hot Mulligan, at the Fillmore Detroit both Saturday, December 6, and Sunday, December 7.
We attended Day 1 on Saturday, and let me tell you, sometimes you’re just meant to see something that reminds you why you love live music, and this show was just that. Being that this is what was to be considered a “hometown show” of sorts, a ton of Emo and Pop Punk lovers packed themselves into the Fillmore to experience 6 bands that were ready to turn their world upside down. We unfortunately missed the opener Rodeo Boys, but we have to shout them out since we heard they’re epic.
ANXIOUS
First up was the Connecticut band Anxious, who formed in 2016. They immediately snagged our attention with their energy and killer sounds. The songs you have to check out to get sucked into this band are “Call From You,” “Counting Sheep,” “One Way Street,” “Some Girls,” and “Growing Up Song.” We’re definitely going to be listening to this band more, as they were the favorite new discovery that night in our book.
ARM’S LENGTH
We’ve heard of Arm’s Length numerous times, but we’ve never had the pleasure of seeing them until now. Hailing from Canada, the band tends to come this direction from time to time, and now we’re realizing we should have looked into them sooner. They played a 7-song set which included songs “Funny Face,” “Object Permanence,” “Tough Love,” and “Fatal Flaw.”
DRUG CHURCH
I’d be lying if I said that my drive for covering this show wasn’t heavily influenced by the opportunity to see Drug Church again. After seeing them on tour with Alkaline Trio and at Riot Fest in 2024, and obsessing over their newest album, ‘Prude,’ we knew we were in for one of the best sets of the night.
The band spoke to the crowd after the first 2 songs, saying that they knew that their music was a bit more rowdy than a typical emo music bill, and offered attendees at the front rail to exit, and with the help of security, they would be escorted back to their spot for the remaining bands. Then, they proceeded to try to break The Fillmore’s crowd surfing record, which is well into the 300’s. While I don’t think they cleared it, they had the most crowd surfers of the night, that’s for sure.
Class acts, as they always are, frontman Patrick Kindlon took what could have been time for the band to perform another song to shout out every single band on the bill, and ask for applause from the audience for each act. There’s a fine line a frontman can tread between killer vocals that are brutal in their special way and commanding the crowd with a hint of aggression, but then showing how you are loyal to those who lift you up around them. Drug Church taking this time to do so proved they deserve their spot, and are humbled by it.
The only gripe I have is that they couldn’t play more songs. Working their way through their 12 tracks, they only played 2 from their 2024 album ‘Prude,’ those songs being “Demolition Man” and “Slide 2 Me.” This gave the fans 10 tracks from other great releases of theirs to listen back after the show, including fan favorites “Weed Pin” and “Myopic.”
THE STARTING LINE
The Starting Line may seem like an outlier on this bill, but I assure you, they make perfect sense. When you start digging deep into the emo catalogs of old, you will find “The Best of Me” immortalized in stone, along with a few fan favorites (one of my personal favorites, which didn’t get played at this show, is “Bedroom Talk”).
Focusing on technical prowess rather than flamboyant showmanship, The Starting Line played 10 tracks for the audience, who were gearing up for Hot Mulligan and simultaneously cooling down from Drug Church. Some favorites include “21,” “Surprise, Surprise,” and “Leaving.”
HOT MULLIGAN
And at long last, we reach Hot Mulligan. With a dummy in a hospital bed on stage to mimic their album cover for ‘The Sound A Body Makes When It’s Still,’ the stage set up led fans to the fact that Hot Mulligan is now on THAT LEVEL. They started their set with the first track off the new album called “Moving To Bed Bug Island,” and there were two camera operators in the photo pit who looked to be filming the action, for maybe a music video perhaps?
Going in chronological order, the band played the front half of ‘The Sound A Body Makes When It’s Still,’ including the interlude, in which frontman Tades Sanville said “we know you skip these, so we’re going to make you listen to them in person.” Once they worked their way through to “Monica Lewinskibidi,” they switched gears and played some of their other hits, including “John ‘The Rock’ Cena, Can You Smell What The Undertaker,” “Drink Milk and Run,” “Shh! Golf Is On,” and then wrapped it up neatly in a Christmas gift with “*Equip Sunglasses,*” followed by “BCKYRD” at song 21.
There’s a different energy to “hometown shows,” and this was no exception. A lot of the time, you’ll see music journalists say the crowd was “buzzing,” or “electrified,” and while those may be clichés, we can’t lie when we say that was exactly what we felt. Jam packed, body-to-body, tried and true fans got to have an experience that felt a bit more like worship than just any old show. Maybe I’m a sap, but watching fans react in real time to their favorite song might be one of my favorite things, and I ended up shedding a few tears of joy knowing that this night was the best night of someone’s life.
Thats what music is, what shows should be, and gosh-darnit, we should thank Hot Mulligan for that.