LOS ANGELES, CA- Social Drag is the gritty guitar-driven project of Los Angeles based singer-songwriter, Emily Hulslander. In 2020, the artist turned toward songwriting after a devastating breakup and emerged with a six-song homage to her ‘90s alt-rock roots. While Hulslander had been crafting skillful, melodic songs and establishing herself as a live performer and musician for years, she had often referred to her more “rock-centric” songs as outliers amongst the more singer-songwriter fare, and desired a place where they could sonically live together in the same world. She reached back into nostalgia for what she considers “the greatest decade of music” and took a deeper dive into the songs of artists like Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana and Liz Phair to draw influence and inspiration for her sonic experiment.
Hulslander crafted each song off her self-titled EP, Social Drag, in quarantine. She found the creation of the demos to be meditative as she spent late nights at home layering guitars and programming hi-hat sounds. When the dark cloud of the pandemic lifted, the songwriter approached a core group of engineers and musicians to record the project. The collective dedicated themselves to giving the songs the texture of the ‘90s; evoking the height of Weezer’s fame with crunchy guitar riffs on songs like “Drug Like You” and “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head,” skirting the line of messy grunge with heavy-hitting drum fills on “Never Enough” and building a sonic guitar-soaked world from one lilting continuous guitar riff inspired by Stone Temple Pilots on “Out Of My Hands.”
While the instrumentation is a persistent gut punch, Hulslander’s voice offers moments ranging from ferocious growls to delicate cries. The closer, “Remind Me” leaves the listener with very little closure. But closure was never the point; Social Drag is about exploring the dark while holding hands with the past. By the end of the EP, both Hulslander and the audience have had a similar journey. You don’t always need to know what story you want to tell, you just have to have the desire to tell it.
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