American "post emo" foursome HOT MULLIGAN serve up brutal honesty with a dose of humour.

Since the dawn of Green Day and Blink-182, pop-punk has been the perfect soundtrack for keg parties and pizza. But when you're so sad you can't take life seriously, what do you listen to? Enter Hot Mulligan, purveyors of the thinking person's pop-punk.

Just as likely to drop mics as they are bombs, Hot Mulligan specialise in making you laugh with song titles silly enough for shitposting before breaking your heart with their hard-hitting life lessons. But the global pandemic didn't pepper their new album 'Why Would I Watch' with a level of honesty; it's always been there.

Having watched their 2020 breakthrough 'You'll Be Fine' land "just like a dead fish flopping on the land" during Covid, Tades - joined by drummer Brandon Blakeley and guitarists Chris Freeman and Ryan Malicsi - found it all "just awkward", releasing a handful of EPs, singles, and acoustic volumes as a "complete distraction, because we were all so fucking bored."

While Hot Mulligan became a big name in deep space, they watched helplessly from the comfort of their own sofas. It wasn't a creative reawakening; it simply "just sucked the whole time, no one had any fun." But they're not beyond accepting a life in lockdown helped raise their stock.

"It feels weird to say that Covid helped the album, but it did because what else were people doing? No one was at work, no one was at school, so what else are you going to do but sit, play video games, and listen to music, you know?

Incompetent governments and prolonged pandemics took Tades down a path of discovery, one that ultimately led to 'Why Should I Watch' being born. "I wanted to buy a camera to record stuff and take pictures and videos, but I always have a lot of regret about how I conduct myself, and it keeps me up. It bothers me, and it really eats at me, so why would I want to have that? Why would I want to look back with nostalgia at something I'm ashamed of?"

The push and pull of past, present, and future took the vocalist down a Wonderland-sized rabbit hole. It's documented across a year's worth of songwriting on 'Why Should I Watch', beginning with 'No Shoes In The Coffee Shop (Or Socks)'. Exploring the weight memories carry, it begs the question, do we put too much stock in our past lives?

"Oh hell yeah, fucking absolutely," Tades laughs before digging below the surface. "We're so hard about our own actions. I know these feelings that I have are irrational, but that doesn't stop the feeling from happening, just as it doesn't for most people with anxiety ever, you know?

Like comedians shielding themselves from sadness with satire, Hot Mulligan's outrageous song titles - 'Christ Alive My Toe Dammit Hurts', 'John "The Rock" Cena, Can You Smell What The Undertaker' - act as metaphors for the deepest cuts 'Why Should I Watch' infects.

The titles "rarely have anything to do with anything other than our little inside references and dumb jokes," because they simply aren't "serious enough as people to just be doom and gloom. We're goofy and stupid and maybe also vehemently depressed." But they do represent the intersection between alt-comedy, depression, indifference, and shitposting - some of the album's key themes.

Tades sees indifference as "a great coping mechanism because how can you be sad if you don't care?" But that realisation came at a great cost: understanding where that intersection gets weird. "Same thing where like everyone makes the 'I'll kill myself' jokes, and everyone chuckles along, but the seed of truth in that is it should be unsettling because it sucks, and it really sucks to feel like that, but we have our little shield of indifference and goofy little shit-posty garbage humour."

On 'Why Would I Watch', Hot Mulligan gift wrap their messages of mental health to a generation of fans most caught in the culture clash with three-minute emo-pop bangers. But Tades isn't looking to be the poster child of mental health awareness.

It's a harsh reality because we all hold certain albums and artists in high regard, but at the end of the day, they're all just human beings, too. For Tades, he's "just an instrument of catharsis" who "realistically cannot help you unless you're using music to help yourself" - deep down, he's going through the same things too. "I didn't solve it either; it's why I'm writing about it. I didn't get over it; it still sucks."

While "the death of the author is insane" because "people think that I'm still writing songs about girls, and I haven't written a girl song in years and years and years," it's ultimately why so much of 'Why Should I Watch' is rooted in trips down memory lane; Tades is working through what's made him the man he is today. Closing track 'John "The Rock" Cena, Can You Smell What The Undertaker' is a prime example.

Weirdly, community is what it all comes down to. It's what Hot Mulligan are building song by song, album by album, as pop-punk's thinking man's band. No matter your walk of life, you're welcome in their community.

"There's a bunch of people who know exactly what happened and how bad it sucked and how bad it still sucks. It's important because people need community, whether or not you want one, and that's a good one to have."■

Taken from the June 2023 edition of Upset. Hot Mulligan's album 'Why Would I Watch' is out now.