Modern Baseball Announce Help Hotline

Modern Baseball

Modern Baseball have announced a free help hotline for their upcoming tour in an effort to keep fans save at their shows. If you’re feeling unsafe at a show you can text (201) 731-6626. A video detailing the new hotline can be found below and an interview with Brendan Lukens from the band goes into more detail on MTV:

I feel like enough people were just coming up to us after shows and hitting us up via Twitter in general and just giving us subtle hints or just flat-out telling us that they were having a weird time or an uneasy time at our shows. So after we saw bands like PWR BTTM and Speedy [Ortiz], all these sick bands, do really great things to help their fans out, we thought we could hopefully do something similar.

I love seeing stuff like this.

Read More “Modern Baseball Announce Help Hotline”

Review: Modern Baseball – Holy Ghost

Modern Baseball - Holy Ghost

About halfway through “Note To Self,” the third track off Modern Baseball’s new album Holy Ghost, Jacob Ewald earnestly proclaims: “There will be no more fucking around today.” On this particular song it’s mostly about Ewald taking control of his life, but that line can be applied to the Philly quartet’s evolution as well. The band’s first two releases (Sports and You’re Gonna Miss It All) catapulted the band from humble beginnings into playing shows with punk stalwarts like The Wonder Years, The Menzingers, and Say Anything. This rise set them up as the premier band on Run For Cover’s roster. But there was also plenty of fucking around on those albums while they blurred the lines between pop-punk and emo. On Holy Ghost, there are no more assholes with iPhones or songs about Chloe’s Twitter handle. Rather, Modern Baseball’s third LP works as a split release – Ewald writing and leading the first six tracks while Brendan Lukens undertaking the last five. On the surface this may seem like a recipe for an uneven listening experience; however, Holy Ghost rolls through its eleven tracks beautifully while touching on topics like finding love, battling depression, fighting addiction, and coping with mental illness.

Read More “Modern Baseball – Holy Ghost”

Review: Modern Baseball – You’re Gonna Miss It All

Modern Baseball - You're Gonna Miss It All

I really, really don’t like the term guilty pleasure. I think it’s a dirty phrase that’s used too often by people who don’t feel guilty at all about liking whatever they’re talking about. I used to describe the Snakes On A Plane theme song as a guilty pleasure (while we’re here: that song is a undoubtedly a high in Crush Management’s dominance over the world), but then I thought about it and decided that “guilty pleasures” do not exist. 

There is a point here, hidden underneath the layers of awesome, guiltless pleasure currently filling your ears, since I’m assuming that you clicked on that link and by now William Beckett is getting into the first chorus of the Snakes On A Plane jam. For many people, Modern Baseball’s sophomore LP, You’re Gonna Miss It All, will seem like it belongs under the umbrella of things you like but deep down you’re not really supposed to like. This makes sense to me because I felt that way about the band’s debut, Sports, for a very long time. Brendan Lukens and Jake Ewald are not “technically good” at singing. Modern Baseball does not write gloriously composed instrumentals that will one day serve as a reference point upon which even more glorious songs will be written. The lyrics Lukens and Ewald belt out – sometimes loudly, sometimes softly, and sometimes mumble-y – have an expiration date on them. Case in point: The opening track, “Fine, Great,” mentions Instagram. Someday, Instagram will not exist. Probably.

Read More “Modern Baseball – You’re Gonna Miss It All”

Review: Modern Baseball – Sports

Modern Baseball - Sports

Sometimes, an album takes you by surprise. Sure, you’ve heard tracks by the band previously and you had high enough expectations, hence you picking up the album in the first place, but you didn’t expect to be particularly taken aback by it. You certainly didn’t expect to find yourself casually raving about how *insert somewhat unknown band name here* is the “best band ever!” after only a couple of listens to the record, but hell, that’s how it happens. Modern Baseball are one of these bands. Previously, all I’d heard was a split with Marietta, released early this year, and a handful of demo tracks, and whilst they were promising, Modern Baseball hadn’t quite established themselves as protegees, more ones to watch. So, their first full length, Sports, was a record to look out for rather than a highly anticipated one. However, by Jove, it’s a lot more than that. It appears that Modern Baseball are certainly the best band you’ve never heard of. 

Read More “Modern Baseball – Sports”