Hop Along, the alternative band from Philadelphia, just released their new album, Painted Shut, on May 4. Band members Frances Quinlan, Mark Quinlan, Tyler Long, and Joe Reinhart created the title Painted Shut in order to reflect upon the poetic lyrics, full of grief, nostalgia and hopelessness.
The song titles The Knock, Buddy in the Parade, Happy to see Me, I Saw my Twin and Sister Cities all contain a haunted sense of incompleteness, perhaps relating to many of the band members’ lives. The lyrics in most of the songs refer to the searching that goes in their world as they try to figure out what it is that make them feel at a loss: “the dream just escaped me again”, “Get outta here, go home,” “All I found was myself,” “walked these streets up and down.”
Even the song “Horshoe Crabs” takes on a sad tune, but is intelligently well-crafted to create a double meaning within the meaning of the title and the metaphor involved in the lyrics of “one hundred saddles/ without horses galloping”, escaping home but always coming back, “when I was young[….] they used to/ find me pitching horseshoe crabs/ back into the sun,” another way for the band to express their sense of confusion in a world too big for them to be able to live happily.
The bleakness is emphasized with deep rock guitar riffs as well as with the singer’s unique voice that is reminiscent of Metric band member Emily Haine’s sound.
The grey album cover also conveys the darkness involved in Hop Alog’s songs. The design is composed of a still life with apples and other vegetables that are hard to make out but resemble onions and potatoes. The rest of the contours trace the outlines of skulls.
Towards the top of the bowl of fruits are merely two birds who are able to fly through the chaos.