Frances Quinlan doesn’t try to write protest songs, but sometimes the apocalypse just leaks into your headphones.
“I was thinking a lot about my own inability—or even reluctance—to access my own power,” the Hop Along frontperson tells me, sounding less like an indie rock singer and more like a reluctant oracle. “And having believed in falsehoods for so long.”
The band’s 2018 record Bark Your Head Off, Dog may sound like a fever dream wrapped in electric cello and cryptic time signatures, but it starts like you’ve walked into someone’s private conversation and ends in a cheerleading chant. “I liked the idea of having a waltz turn into a contemporary dance,” Quinlan says.
The album kicks off with “How Simple,” a deceptively huge-sounding track originally sketched out for a movie that never materialized. “The guidelines were very loose,” they explain. “But it kick-started something.” That “something” turned into one of the year’s most critically adored indie rock records. “My heart can be,” Quinlan sings, “as true as it is a lie.” It’s the kind of line that makes you want to sit down and rethink your entire personality.
Then there’s “Not Abel,” a song that starts like a medieval folk tune, ends like a glitchy dancefloor epiphany, and includes the boldest production flex of all: a fade-out. “It’s a wonderful tool for people that don’t really know how to end songs,” Quinlan laughs. “Like myself.”
The throughline of the album is power—who has it, who abuses it, and how it erodes the people watching from below. “It pervades history,” they say. “But I didn’t want the men in the songs to become the focus. They just happen to be in power.”
Instead, Quinlan wanted to write from the other end of the seesaw—the slow-motion disaster of realizing your own voice is quieter than you’d like. “It’s a feeling I’m kind of used to,” they say, “but I think we actually said what we meant to say this time. That’s new.”
As for the high school chant on “One That Suits Me,” we have Smog to thank. “I was inspired by the song ‘Bloodflow,’” Quinlan says. “You spend enough hours in the studio and you start having weird ideas. I just started chanting.”
Weirder still? The refrain “I am for peace” actually came from a World War I deep dive. “I was listening to [Dan Carlin’s] Hardcore History,” Quinlan confesses. “It stuck with me.” Why not channel global catastrophe into one of the most hopeful lines on the album?
So no, Bark Your Head Off, Dog isn’t some detached art project. It’s the sound of someone trying to shout through the noise and occasionally breaking into cheerleader mode to do it.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "How Simple" below!
