“You’re Gonna Miss It All manages to capture the very modern blend of frustration, listlessness and resignation felt by a subset of 2014’s technology-obsessed youth. Even if it’s not punk in its purest form, it’s still a powerful sentiment.”
Parker Evans
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Parker Evans is an economics senior and Mustang News music columnist.
The members of Modern Baseball are more firebrand pastors than punk rockers. They make music meant to be played live and loud in a sweaty, beer-drenched Philadelphia basement with approximately 18 inches separating the band and crowd. Where Modern Baseball stands out, though, is that its crowds know every word to every song.
Such is the energy and intensity of Modern Baseball. Like its Northeastern brothers-in-arms (and friends, not coincidentally) The Front Bottoms, these guys are particularly gifted at tapping into the minds of young, frustrated twenty-somethings with cracked iPhones and bittersweet memories of high school friends. The kids lucky enough to be in the Philadelphia scene (where record stores sold out of the album’s preorder) are already acutely aware of the following of die-hard fans Modern Baseball has built, but You’re Gonna Miss It All will make inroads in expanding that base nationwide.
Equal parts emo, punk and indie, Modern Baseball is settling into its groove, but don’t let any one of those adjectives throw you off. You’re Gonna Miss It All picks up right where it left off on Sports, the band’s fantastic 2012 debut. Guaranteed, there are kids all over the country who will find the intro track “Fine, Great” more galvanizing than the Braveheart speech. If you have a soft spot for raucous, anthemic sing-along choruses like I do, you’ll be right at home.
Most of the album is dedicated to the inner monologues of paranoid guys not far removed from high school. In the lead single “Your Graduation,” the narrator runs into an ex at house party. “You f****** miss me,” he says, although it’s unclear if those words are spoken or thought. “There, I said it, I guess I’ll talk to you in a few months,” he spits before he goes on to second-guess himself for the 100th time.
“Rock Bottom” paints a picture of a wicked hangover, but it’s the narrator’s sharp quips to the couple on the couch and mounting frustration with his increasingly bad case of the spins that bring the song to life. Over an energetic boilerplate rock riff, he finally makes his decision in the outro. “To hell with class, I’m skipping,” he tells his girl. “We can watch ‘Planet Earth’ and brainstorm tattoos.”
For all its virtues, You’re Gonna Miss It All is a few songs too long. It’s no match in scope for the posterboy of punk grandiloquence, Titus Andronicus, but there’s still a literary intelligence seeping through every song, a la Say Anything or The Weakerthans. Alternating singers Brendan Lukens and Jacob Ewald both have a talent for easy conversation that makes their lyrics eminently listenable, authentic and often insightful. On “Apartment,” Ewald offers a neat summation of Modern Baseball’s current state: “All those classes in high school we fell asleep in, and now I can hardly close my eyes.”
There’s been a lot of ink spilled over what punk means in the 21st century, and with the Winter Olympics in full swing, the conversation about Pussy Riot has taken center stage. Those women use punk as a weapon to fight for feminism and free speech and against the current social state of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, but in America today, the oppression felt by angsty punk kids comes from subjects much more shadowy and elusive. You’re Gonna Miss It All manages to capture the very modern blend of frustration, listlessness and resignation felt by a subset of 2014’s technology-obsessed youth. Even if it’s not punk in its purest form, it’s still a powerful sentiment.
Check out 2012 debut, Sports, below.