Frances Quinlan. Photo: Lauren Lancaster for Vulture
Toward the end of Hop Along’s set at Williamsburg’s Rough Trade Tuesday night, the rest of the band leaves Frances Quinlan onstage to sing “Happy to See Me,” a vocally unbelievable song off the vocally unbelievable Painted Shut, their second record as a full band, which came out that day. It’s hard to keep a standing crowd quiet, but the 300-person audience stood transfixed, waiting for whichever note, whichever tone, Frances, the lead vocalist of the Philadelphia-based band, would sing next. A cup drops, and everyone looks at the culprit furiously; I fight with all I have to hold in an allergy-season sneeze. Then it happens. It happened earlier that day, at a taping of WNYC’s “Soundcheck,” when she broke from the melody of “Horseshoe Crab,” lingering on one high note until her voice gave out; it happened during the actual soundcheck, when the sound guy heard her sing the first note of “Texas Funeral,” opened his eyes wide, and stopped doing his job for a second; it happened later that soundcheck, when a teen walked away from a friend mid-conversation to film a few seconds on her phone: Frances Quinlan has the ability to make a room stop breathing with her voice.
With not-ideal-for-this-humidity bangs, she’s small and unassuming and looks like she could be Feist’s little sister. But her voice demands attention. Every review of Hop Along’s acclaimed new record essentially says the same thing: “That voice, though.” “An abrasive snarl and a smooth croon.” “Full-throated bourbon howl.” “Pungent and potent.” “Raggedy and raw, with a wild, untameable streak.” New York’s Lindsay Zoladz probably summed her vocals up best when describing the band’s lead single, “Waitress”: “Something about it is violently sweet, like a bite of cake so sugary that it actually causes you physical pain. Her delivery is ecstatically wide-eyed and her tone is gravelly, like a chain-smoking toddler who is about to punch you in the mouth.”
Do you want to know what it’s like? Here is the bridge of “Happy to See Me.” It’s out of context, but you’ll get it.
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