B-Side Guys

“Girl From the East Side” hits like a police report transformed into a fever dream, with Holy Roller Baby’s Jared Mullins serving as both witness and narrator to a haunting urban mythology. This isn’t just another rock song about the wrong side of the tracks – it’s a visceral exploration of childhood fears manifested into adult nightmares.

The narrative opens with deceptive formality (“Well Officer, you know…”) before plunging into the kind of story that transforms local neighborhoods into dark legends. Mullins, drawing from his Cleveland upbringing, crafts a tale where the city’s East-West divide becomes more than geographic – it’s an emotional borderland where innocence collides with harsh reality.

Recording between Dallas’s Valve Studios and Radiohead’s hallowed Courtyard Studios in Oxfordshire, Holy Roller Baby has captured something raw and immediate. The production, helmed by Ian Davenport, allows the horror of the discovery to build organically through the arrangement. When Mullins delivers the line “A bag around her whole bloody mess debris,” the instrumentation creates a sonic crime scene around his words.

The track’s structural brilliance lies in its use of repetition. The recurring question “Who can heal you?” morphs into “Who can feel you?” – a subtle shift that speaks volumes about the psychological impact of bearing witness to tragedy. It’s the kind of detail that elevates the song from mere shock value to genuine psychological exploration.

What’s particularly striking is how the guitar work mirrors the narrative’s psychological progression. The initial restraint gives way to increasingly complex textures, culminating in a solo that feels less like traditional rock heroics and more like a primal scream. This is where those borrowed Radiohead amps and Gaz Coombes guitars earn their keep, creating tones that hover between vintage and visceral.

The refrain “I’m never going back to the east side” carries the weight of both trauma and testimony. It’s delivered with the conviction of someone who’s seen beyond the veil of urban legends into something far more real and unsettling. Mullins transforms a childhood boogeyman – those rumors of discovered bodies – into a meditation on innocence lost.

For a second single from an end of summer album (Smile Like Heaven, released August 23, 2024), “Girl From the East Side” shows remarkable confidence in its willingness to make listeners uncomfortable. Danielle Perry’s comparison to Queens of the Stone Age feels apt, but this is darker territory – less desert rock swagger, more Midwest gothic.

The track serves as compelling evidence that Holy Roller Baby’s evolution from Austin upstarts to recording in Radiohead’s studio isn’t just a matter of geographic progression – it’s an artistic quantum leap. When Mullins says he wants to channel the emotion of having one’s mind blown by rock and roll, he’s achieved something more nuanced: he’s captured the moment when childhood urban legends give way to adult understanding, when the monsters under the bed are replaced by real-world horrors.