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| Image Credit: Melanie Levi Flickr |
Artist: Modern Baseball
Album: Holy Ghost
Record Label: Big Scary Monsters
Release Date: 12th May 2016
Emotion is an ambiguous and sometimes disingenuous word.
Without wanting to prescribe to an over-analytical, hyperbole-ridden mindset
that descends from post-modernism, it’s a word that is often contorted to fit a
purview, or enhanced given a particular circumstance. It is, however, quite
often easy to tell when emotion is genuine, and on their 3rd
full-length Holy Ghost Philadelphia
quartet Modern Baseball have certainly tugged on their own heart-strings.
An album which revels in guilt, morbidity and eventually
hope, Holy Ghost is a tale of two
halves. The first was penned by guitarist Jake Ewald, and the second by fellow
guitarist and vocalist Brendan Lukens. Throughout these songs the lyrics run
the ringer through themes of giving up, loss and distance, tensions between the
band members (sometimes exacted in a fiery manner, as on ‘Note To Self’),
depression and both the strains and promise of being a band on the rise.
Musically it would be easy for one to sit here and trace
Modern Baseball’s lineage back. Certainly this is an album in awe to early ‘90s
emo and alt-rock heritage, but its sense of melody and fire-in-the-gut pace
carries it through with a grace that means it doesn’t remind necessarily remind
one of how great Rites Of Spring were. It’s always nice when a band take a
formula and manage not to re-arrange it but to produce songs and melodies that
hit home in terms of their memorability and impact, and for the most
part Holy Ghost achieves that in
abundance.
It’s the aforementioned lyrical matter that sits at the heart
of the record though, meaning that even though investment in a certain amount
of emotional tangibility might be required on behalf of the listener, if it
strikes one as resonant then it can be completely consuming. “All I found were
empty cans and cigarette butts lying in dirty parking lots in Ottawa”, intones
Lukens on ‘Note To Self’, before asserting that “pretending we feel safe right
now gets harder every day”. The more blood-quickening ‘Mass’ is more direct in
its approach to feelings of loneliness and distance from loved ones, and Ewald’s
poetic tendencies are at their most forthright on the gorgeous ‘Everyday’; “You
need to hide, it’s in your framework, look me in the eyes and tell me I don’t
know how shame works”.
‘Breathing In Stereo’ in the record’s latter half is a
near-perfect, short, sharp encapsulation of all the disconnection, desperation
& hope felt in the given circumstances- “Why does it take 2000 miles for me
to say I love you?” delivers Lukens with a rawness in his voice. The
progression and recovery becomes most fervent on the final tracks, the
excellent ‘What if’ ending in a righteously bouncy discussion of the future,
and closer ‘Just Another Face’ will likely be empowering to anyone affected by
mental health issues in any way.
It’s a testament to just how intrinsic a narrative Holy Ghost is for the band that it ends
on a high note. The documentary they released to accompany the record,
Tripping In The Dark, shows the full
extent to how heartfelt the band’s journey has been, and the time and detail
invested in the story telling on the 11 tracks here is the sort that can only
be informed by actual experiences. As is so often the case with decent
revivalist records in recent years, naysayers will likely chuck the “overly
emotional” tag at this and leave it. Fine; this is a record which succeeds on
the basis of its personal delivery and feeling, and for those who can tap
into that it’s a total reward.
8/10
Key Tracks: 'Everyday', 'Breathing In Stereo', 'Just Another Face'
For Fans Of: Basement, The Wonder Years
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