Review of Frances Quinlan’s “Likewise”
Likewise, released just this past January, is the debut solo album from Frances Quinlan, best known as the front woman of Philly indie-rock/emo band Hop Along.
The album opens with an almost lullaby sounding Piltdown Man. The track is much more stripped down than most of the work you’d find on Quinlan’s work with Hop Along, made up almost entirely of just her voice and this deep dark synthetic organ. She paints vivid images and stories with winding abstract lyrics that make for a somewhat strange but also intimate listening experience. The entire album seems to take influence from mid-west emo.
Rare Thing is the third track and was the lead single for the album. On this track we really hear Quinlan make use of the classic instruments and timbres of modern indie rock, especially with the bass, which emanates the feeling of late 2010s indie-rock. However, while she embraces the timbres and instruments of the modern indie-rock sound she very much makes them her own. By infusing these recognizable sounds with mid-west emo, math rock and even folk influences, as well as her own personal vocal styles and melodies she creates a really unique sounding album.
It’s in her vocals that we really see Quinlan make her uniqueness as an artist known. She has a very personal approach to her lyricism and word setting. Her melodic style can be characterized by its angular shape and the slightly awkward way in which she matches her words to rhythms. This has always been true of her work, even on Hop Along, but it becomes a lot more accentuated on Likewise.
Where Hop Along’s work is distinctly in the tradition of indie-rock and emo with bits of folk, Quinlan’s solo effort seems a lot more folk influenced and follows in the tradition of singer song writers like Joan Baez or Kate Bush. The Kate Bush comparison I think is especially noteworthy — while their music doesn’t necessarily sound the same, the approach they take to it does feel similar. Both write these winding abstract songs that still carry specific engaging stories, their strange vocal stylings and the way they both set their lyrics to melody is also strikingly similar to me.
On songs like Lean, a beautiful guitar ballad, we really see Quinlan embrace her diverse folk influences. While a violin lays the almost ever-present background sound over which the rest of the song occurs, she performs a touching ballad. In a lot of ways, it’s reminiscent of British or Irish folk. Tracks like these really highlight her abilities as a talented writer. For the final track couple tracks, Now That I’m Back and Carry the Zero, Quinlan returns to a much more modern indie-rock style with distorted electric guitars, fat bass lines, synthetic sounding drums and high reverb synths.
The album as a whole is a bundle of diverse tracks ranging from soft emo, to indie rock to folk ballads, strung together into one cohesive project by Quinlan’s unique vocal stylings and lyricism. If you are a fan of Hop Along, indie-rock, indie-pop, folk or just interesting sounds and lyricism, this album is a must listen not because you’ll love it all but because among the unique twists on familiar sounds and styles there is almost definitely at least one song on here that you will enjoy.
