The Margaret Hooligans

“Gritty, raw, and unflinchingly themselves, The Margaret Hooligans are a rock group that sound like they're out of a time capsule.” - Kartik Sundar

— Find No Enemy

Royal octopus canal

new single out now!

February 13th, 2024 - Royal Octopus Canal is the fifth single from The Margaret Hooligans upcoming fourth album, ThunderHole Rock n’ Roll. Royal Octopus Canal is a gritty break up song, the bastard child of Patti Smith and Bikini Kill. It is an anguished lament, where Cratty bemoans what went wrong while roiling electric ukulele slide riffs and pounding drums rival her turmoil. While Cratty’s vocals often temper the harshness of the distorted strings and drums, in this case she growls along like a wounded animal to greater effect.

Royal Octopus Canal is the fifth of eleven singles that will be released through September 2024, with a full album release scheduled for October 2024. It will be available on all streaming platforms, the band’s website and Bandcamp on Tuesday, February 13th. Previous releases from this album have been Main Street Zulus, Alley Cat Stomp, Revenge of the ScarJo, and Our Museum of Failure.

Royal Octopus Canal was recorded in the basement of Piety Street Publishing, mixed and produced by Mr. Strontium and was mastered by KRAMER of Shimmy Disc Records. Meg Cratty handles lead vox and electric ukulele. Mr. Strontium takes care of back up vox and drums/percussion.

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Saturday Night at bartertown out noW!

The Margaret Hooligans third album released July 17th, 2023!

The Margaret Hooligans have been an unstoppable creative force since their first single release in August 2021, releasing 37 songs in the span of less than two years. They are now releasing their third album, Saturday Night in Bartertown, which features previously released singles “Doggie Pizza Crust”, “Hey Love”, “The Lost Stilt Walkers”, “Witch on the Corner”, and “What Kind of Donut Are You?” as well as four unreleased songs, one of which is a Grateful Dead cover of “New Speedway Boogie”.

The album ranges in themes, displaying a soulful side in “Hey Love”, a haunting, drum driven anthem about two lovers drifting from each other using the metaphor of space travel (this song was an entry for this year’s Tiny Desk Contest at NPR and has been the band’s most successful release yet).

The band’s signature playfulness is explored in “Doggie Pizza Crust”, a song about a hungry man driven to fight a dog for the last pizza crust, “My Dog Ringo”, a pop rock song about man’s love for his best friend that should really be a jingle for chewy.com or the SPCA, and “What Kind of Donut Are You?”, about singer/electric ukulelist Meg Cratty’s gluten intolerance and contradictory love of donuts.

“The Lost Stilt Walkers”, “Witch on the Corner”, and “New Speedway Boogie” show off their hard rocking side which they have been known for, complete with cowbells, slide uke and djembes to create a circusy vibe while blowing your sonic doors off. The interpretation of “New Speedway Boogie” through this lens gives it a raw and edgy feel more in line with the subject matter, something that always contrasted with the original’s meandering laid back style.

“I Won’t Speed Up, You Won’t Slow Down” is a song about compromise for the greater good, of looking beyond the immediacy of a moment to the long range consequences of the decisions we make in the here and now. “Say What You Want/Trousers of the Holy”, the penultimate track on the album, is two songs in one, the first half of the song is more delicate, with just a solo vocal track turned up higher in the mix while Meg arpeggiates electrified chords, and mourns loss in a resigned way, but when the second half kicks in, she seems to be fighting back against the grief, defiantly pushing back at the sadness.

Themes of loneliness, deprivation of gluten, love for a dog, a disgruntled neighbor in a hood experiencing gentrification, disappearing New Orleans stilt walkers, and the drifting of two lovers, as well as the stabbing at the Altamont Speedway Concert are offered up as a chaotic rock n’ roll buffet. From a band with such a broad palate, we should expect nothing less, really.

All songs on Saturday Night in Bartertown were recorded in the basement of Piety Street Publishing, mixed and mastered by Jon Huxtable of Smallfish Recordings, and was produced by Mr. Strontium.

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Turntable Tribulations out now!

THE MARGARET HOOLIGANS sophomore album out Oct. 21, 2022!

The electric ukulele and drum duo is back with Turntable Tribulations, a follow up to last year’s BoomBox Blasts, which was a compilation of songs written during the Covid-19 lockdowns. These songs were also written and recorded during the pandemic, but were recorded later, and feature clean recordings and tight production, while retaining the chaotic sloppiness that is the band’s signature style. Their themes have expanded to include several songs that deal with different aspects of interacting in a virtual world, “Feedback”, a recently released single about opinion overload and oversharing in digital spaces, “Bippity Boppity” the half-rap half sung tirade against performing constantly for the seemingly insatiable beast that is social media, and “Good Morning Micro Man”, a jaunty tongue and cheek about a Silicon Valley billionaire who microdoses LSD “to divine what fund to hedge.”

There is also “Red Rider”, a nod to the fairytale of little Red Riding Hood, but spun to reflect our crazy dystopia of late, “Pete and Roger” a tribute to the founding members of The Who, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, whose tumultuous friendship is legendary and whose work was a great influence on the duo, and “Oh Lord Hit It”, a song about a drunken dilettante housewife who can’t seem to get it together and whom the band dedicated to Sue Ellen Ewing, the wife of TV show Dallas’s J.R. Ewing. The actress, Linda Gray, who played Sue Ellen Ewing, approved of it on their social media.

Last on the album is an eleven mini rock opera called “Psycho Diapers”, with four chapters strung together by fake commercial jingles. It chronicles the story of a despotic man child, unloved by his rich, busy family, shuttled off to boarding school where he learns to wheel and deal to rise to the upper political echelons, only to be brought down when he crosses the wrong group and they use his attraction to their female leader as a foil for his social demise.

Turntable Tribulations will be available on all streaming platforms, the band’s website and Bandcamp on Friday, October 21st. Pre-orders of the digital and physical CD are currently available on both platforms.

All songs on Turntable Tribulations were recorded in the basement of Piety Street Publishing, mixed and mastered by Jon Huxtable of Smallfish Recordings, and was produced by Mr. Strontium.

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