It is a packed house at Roundhouse tonight, every corner of the room filled with a crowd plainly here for a night of catharsis, with Hot Mulligan the headline draw but plenty already pressed against the barrier well before doors settle. The air feels warm before a note is played, anticipation hanging low over the floor as friends squeeze toward the barricade and late arrivals hunt for any remaining pocket of space. Long before the lights drop, Roundhouse already carries the atmosphere of a night that has outgrown the room.
Support comes from saturdays at your place, the Kalamazoo, Michigan trio making their Australian debut and stepping into the room with zero hesitation. Formed in 2021 by friends from Western Michigan University, vocalist and bassist Esden Stafne, vocalist and drummer Gabe Wood, and guitarist Mitch Gulish have quickly built a reputation in the Midwest emo lane through releases like something worth celebrating, always cloudy and 2025’s these things happen. Their set lands somewhere between basement-show intimacy and full-room catharsis, all heart-on-sleeve melodies and sharp-edged momentum. Far from treating them as a warm-up act, Sydney responds wildly, roaring back choruses and hurling bodies skyward early. When the inevitable shoey demand arrives, the trio submit to the strange Australian rite with admirable confusion and immediate approval from the room.
Then Hot Mulligan hit the stage and Roundhouse detonates. Fresh from their new album The Sound A Body Makes When It’s Still, the Michigan five-piece look every bit like a band in the middle of upward velocity. Their songs have always balanced emotional collapse with sugar-rush hooks, but live they gain extra force. Every breakdown hits harder, every melody lifts higher, every lyric sounds like it has been carried here by hundreds of throats.
As the set gathers speed, the audience becomes an act of its own. Crowd surfers roll endlessly toward the barrier in wave after wave, while circle pits burst open across the floor, collapse, then reform somewhere else moments later. The room moves with the band rather than merely watching them. Set opener How do you not know it’s Armadillo Shells barely gets started before the first bodies lift skyward. Drink Milk and Run and Shhh! Golf Is On keep the room in permanent motion, while Fly Move (The Whole Time) turns the floor into a giant shove of limbs and joy.
There is, of course, another shoey. Australia insists, Hot Mulligan comply, and the room reacts as if it has witnessed a sacred ceremony.Frontman Nathan Sanville switches between ragged confession and deadpan humour, the classic Hot Mulligan trick of sounding devastated and unserious at exactly the same time. Beside him, Chris Freeman adds the second vocal edge that gives these songs their push-pull tension.
What makes Hot Mulligan so compelling is that they understand emo was never meant to be tidy. These songs lurch between sincerity and stupidity, heartbreak and punchlines, anxiety and release. They are messy because people are messy.
By the time closer Sunglasses sends one final surge across the room, Roundhouse looks like it has survived weather. Shirts soaked, voices gone, strangers helping strangers off the barrier rail.
For a band who once played house shows and named songs like inside jokes, this feels enormous. Hot Mulligan are no longer rising. They have arrived.
The tour moves to Adelaide and Perth next, tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser
