For the Record: You're Gonna Miss It All

The word ‘emo,’ with regards to music at least, normally evokes a couple of common reactions for graduates of the American teenage experience.  First, a wave of nostalgia washes over your glazed and jaded eyes, bringing you back to those icky formative middle school years where everyone was horrible and cruel and mom don’t make me go back to school, can we please move far away from here? Thankfully, there were so many bands of 25(plus)-year-old dudes with nasally whines and spiked hair dyed black that ‘got it’ and could ‘speak to us’. Next comes the sudden realization that any band made of the aforementioned aging heartthrobs who wrote lyrics mostly aimed at adolescents (lookin’ at you, Simple Plan) might not have been worth your time—they didn’t have as much figured out as previously thought.

As such, I was weary to see that festering little word glued to essentially every description of Modern Baseball’s newest release You’re Gonna Miss It All that I could find online. I was far too busy with my burgeoning iTunes library of ‘college rock for grown-ups’ – I’m trying to run away from the past here! – to listen, but repeated recommendations for this slick record put out by fellow-college-aged Philly natives made me cave and I gave it a shot.

The first line of the opener “Fine, Great” got me hooked for good when, saying it far better than I ever could, it reduced the entirety of my undergraduate strife into a single sentence: “I hate worrying about the future/’cause all my current problems are rooted in the past.”

In essence, this album is the catharsis for any wayward college kid trying to sort through the mess of emotional chaos that’ll eventually plague us all no matter how many books we sink our heads into, no matter how many life philosophies we churn out at one in the morning with overeager acquaintances and no matter how we carry on through our time here in school.

On “You’re Gonna Miss It All,” self-discovery pokes through the haze of keggers and off-campus house parties in the form of two-and-a-half-minute bursts of simultaneously peppy and bitter vignettes about heartbreak and hangovers. Brendan Lukens, the band’s lead singer and main songwriter, has somehow found the perfect niche between observant, self-aware and naïve, never reaching beyond that which he knows, thankfully avoiding embarrassingly indulgent grasps at truth, or whatever. His lyrics are sharp and witty, not at all whiney yet still boasting a tinge of the kind of pathetic that earns an empathic laugh rather than scornful pity. Each track is a little prickly and sad but no less hilarious and relatable.

Modern Baseball’s members have lived through the same nights we all have, ripe with the same frustration and the same cute innocence of trying to deny reality for just a little bit longer once the morning after strikes: “My head is on the verge of exploding/no amount of aspirin or pizza could help this from hurting,” Lukens croons on “Rock Bottom,” a standout track. The beauty of his words lies in the intensely honest, personal, getting-right-to-the-point nature of each tightly crafted line  —  that and their ability to make me laugh and hate myself all within the same thirty seconds.

Musically, “You’re Gonna Miss It All” contains all that you could want from a simple indie rock album: melodic rhythms, cutting riffs, a sing-along anthem here (“Charlie Black”) and a slow cut there (“Two Good Things”). There are bits of Brand New, Tokyo Police Club and even Built to Spill peppered throughout, if those strike your fancy. Modern Baseball was kind enough to keep its album to a brief 30 minutes, which really gives you just enough of a break from whatever aspect of real life you’re currently vested in. It’s a nice blast from the past with enough meek insight to make you think you’re spending your time well.