Hop Along - "The Knock"
Hop Along - "Texas Funeral"

I found Hop Along on Sean's perfect magic year-end list, and I can't do much better than his description of Frances Quinlan's voice in "Powerful Man" - omnipotent, omniscient - but still. I have a crush, and if you don't write about those they dissolve you from the inside.

Some songs take as much time as you have to unfurl themselves in front of you; others take as long as they need and you just have to stand there and watch. But somehow these ones do both, anything, more, less, whatever you need. They fold themselves up tiny and tight until they fit into the palm of your hand, and then before you blink they're a tiger, an avalanche, a city, the whole sky. Hearing Quinlan's voice - how effortlessly it turns sandpaper-rough into trilling-sweet, sometimes on the same syllable - weave its way through these songs is like watching light scatter when it hits a prism. Plus that guitar, come on; the kind of crashing vulnerability that takes me apart every single time I find it, without fail. Bright fury in a bottle, playful and pleading, confident without ever being too comfortable.

You can use these songs to push back against something, if you need to, or to pull you forward through a feeling if that's what you're looking for. You can use the lyrics as an incantation, an affirmation, a password, none of this is gonna happen to me, none of this is gonna happen, or to understand the sweet, sad story Quinlan's telling. Whatever way you want, it works. It takes skill to make music this open - that means what it means, but lets you mean whatever you like alongside it. A rare, clear-eyed confidence to be this kind of generous.

[buy Painted Shut]