Hello and howdy! welcome to the first installment of Post ‘Emo’-rtem, a (maybe) recurring column looking at emo albums from our past with the lens of temporal distance and (also maybe) a little more wisdom than when we first spun the record.
My name is nish, i’m the lead vocalist and lyricist in tenmonthsummer, chicago’s premier and perhaps only lakeshore emo band. i’ve been in bands for over a decade and have been writing for even longer, so basically that gives me enough cred to justify every silly, fleeting thought you’re about to read!
I’m kidding, of course, really it’s just to say that i really love music and words, and if you’re here, you probably do to. maybe it’s because of the way they make us feel or maybe it’s the way they can capture a feeling we can’t really explain. for me, it’s certainly both, and that’s why the album i wanted to cover today is Modern Baseball’s sophomore release, You’re Gonna Miss It All.
I know! i get it! people talk about this band too much and maybe they’re not all the scene has actually hyped them up to be after all these years! and heck, a lot of people don’t even consider them to be emo! but for my purposes, i’m calling ‘em just that, and with this album hitting a decade old this year, i wanted to revisit a work that really altered my brain chemistry when it first came out.
To get started, let me say that i’m kind of old (like, turning 30 this year). so listening to an album made by sophomores in college when i, too, was a sophomore in college, made me feel like i was listening to a rerun of the last year of my life rather than walking in another person’s shoes.
Without trying to regurgitate too much of Ian Cohen’s Pitchfork Review a decade ago, You’re Gonna Miss It All is a more musically polished effort compared to their debut, Sports (shouts to Will Yip the f*ckin’ goat!) but lyrically, as put by Cohen: “Lukens is still dealing in small stakes.”
These small stakes are the same ones we see in Sports, but instead of high school crushes we move on to the more ‘adult’ pining of college — losing the girl to the other guy, the sleepless nights missing your hometown crew, unfettered access to alcohol and junk food, fumbling through a new dating pool, walking aimlessly listening to the bands you loved in your early teens — You’re Gonna Miss It All isn’t a large lyrical leap far from Sports, but it IS a leap.
When listening to this album, I think it’s clear to see that Jake Ewald’s lyrical additions to Modern Baseball are working a lot harder to evolve from the relatable and candid storytelling from their previous efforts, while Brendan Lukens opens the album with the tongue-in-cheek, snarky-as-ever ‘Fine, Great.’ and the song is not bad, it’s fine (forgive me), but hearing this today the opening track felt lacking in something…
“I hate worrying about the future
‘Cause all my current problems are based around the past“
As a depressed and anxious college student, hearing those opening lines then had me absolutely feral. now, at 29, they certainly don’t hit me the same way because in truth, i’ve lived long enough to make a lot of peace with the things i’ve been through. a lot of what i do worry about IS the future, the past doesn’t bother me as much. and as i spin the album today, the ‘something’ this album might be missing for me now is that it’s no longer relevant to me anymore. i love Modern Baseball a lot, and i consider them a huge reason on why i got into a lot of the music i listen to and make today, but this is an album i haven’t spun all that much since my college days. i don’t think that makes it a bad album or that it makes Modern Baseball a bad band.
There’s maybe an argument out there that says if a band’s work can’t transcend a singular time or moment that it’s objectively weak, but i think this was an album that had to be made for these lads. it’s an album i don’t think they could make again and i think stands as a testament as to why Modern Baseball should perhaps… not come back? (please do not cancel me for this take!!!)
Because here’s the thing, for the age-group this album hits for, it hits HARD. may i point you to the wombo combo of ‘Charlie Black’ into ‘Timmy Bowers’? the flip of the former’s chorus of “wait a minute, ‘ cause I’ve been living/More like a fucking king without you” into the latter’s “wait a minute, ‘ cause I’ve been living/More like a piece of shit without you”. the distorted guitars and crashing drums traded for reverbed feedback and acoustic literally grabbed my heart and juiced it for all it was worth a decade ago.
and if you try to tell me you and your buds have not, at some point either
a. covered ‘Your Graduation’
or
b. lost your voice screaming along to someone playing ‘Your Graduation’
i’m sorry but i just simply don’t believe you! even my old band covered it, like come on!
and while the content of this album maybe hasn’t reached forward through time to evoke the same kind of awe it did back then, what’s cool about this album is how it leaves so many clues to how the band did end up the way they did now. ‘Notes’ and ‘Going to Bed Now’ both reveal the sonic and lyrical roads that would lead Ewald to Slaughter Beach, Dog. there is a clear exploration of lyrical complexity and storytelling Ewald embarks on on this album the paves his road ahead. likewise, Lukens’ signature lyrics about his spinning head and hatred of the self carries on from the first album, to this one, and subsequently through their final release.
to look back at ‘Charlie Black,’ beneath the snide and snark, Lukens is essentially clawing out a call for help:
“Whoa, tragedy’s got my heart a-beating
Whoa, rethinking all my days
Whoa, tragedy’s got my heart a-screaming
Take them away, oh, just take them away today“
this overthinking, these tragedies, they spill over into the next and final phase of Modern Baseball, and it’s another reason why i believe that it’s better to have the run of the band be where it is versus trying to rekindle the emotions and circumstances that created these songs and stories in the first place.
on ‘Pothole,’ one of the softest and final tracks on the album (and also arguably my favorite), Ewald sings in future, past, and present tense, respectively. he’s singing to a person, yes, but he’s singing towards everything. he’s singing towards all we might love and come to miss in the forever flowing currents of our lives.
“But you are the ember of my heart
Whether you like that or not”
when i first encountered You’re Gonna Miss It All, i took the title to be referring to the ways both Lukens and Ewald bounce between the past and future, their coming-to-terms with the fact that things are moving forward whether they’re ready for it or not. i still think it is about that, but i also think it’s a love letter to the college years, to the nostalgia of apartment parties and waking up at noon. the heart fluttering, the heartbreak, the ping-ponging in between: you’re going to miss that. you’re going to miss it all.
– with love, nish
The Diygest 
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