Context – playing schedule-master

My wife is tired of my constant enthusiasm about Modern Baseball.  She’s pretending like she isn’t because she loves me and supports my misguided bouts of excitement at new things, but I can see it in her face when I bring them up.  Thanks for being who you are, Goose!

I loveLOVElove that there is fresh emo in 2012, left to be discovered in 2017.  I stumbled onto them playing a game of YouTube roulette, starting with “Your Graduation.”  I was immediately hooked: they had the forward momentum, they were unpolished in the best way, they were angsty in a way that brings me back to the best memories of the worst days of high school.  I’m nostalgic in a way I usually chastise when my friends start talking about the “good ol’ days” (my days are great now, I have no need or desire to go back).  You’re Gonna Miss It All is an emo-classic–I will put that album up against Brand New’s Your Favorite Weapon, Thursday’s Full Collapse, and Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American any day of the week.  I’m not saying that Modern Baseball is better than any of those albums, I’m saying they belong in the conversation.

Like the waves of emotions evoked by the genre, emo songs serve as a quick punch to the gut.  Get in, do their damage, slam-dance their way back out, leaving a hole that will either close faster than a fresh piercing or will stretch indefinitely like the cutie in the front-row’s gauges.  Modern Baseball tends to leave a hole that only Modern Baseball can fill.

Sports is not quite You’re Gonna Miss It All, but how they got from B to A (since I’m going backwards, technically) is apparent.  Sports is a great album, but it’s not quite hitting in all the same categories as it’s follow-up.  It’s more subdued, has less momentum, and upon first listen seems less clever.  This may end up being a long-term benefit should the quips on You’re Gonna Miss It All prove to feel trite after repeated listens, but for now this feels like the sophomore slump in a weird way.

This album is pretty good, though.  I will listen to it another 4 times or so to get a better feel of the songs in the event they show up at Riot Fest one year.  But really if you’re looking for fresh emo check out You’re Gonna Miss It All.  My excitement for their rumored 2017 release is eclipsed only by rumors of new albums from HAIM and St. Vincent.