Taking the bare-all emotionality definitive of Minneapolis punk acts such as The Replacements, Dillinger Four, and Off With Their Heads, Direct Hit! delivers a dangerously energetic breed of rock 'n' roll with the in-your-face mentality of 1990s Boston street punk. The group stands apart not only by virtue of their lyrics, but also by the sheer force of will driving them sonically forward.
This past week, the band dropped its second full-length album through Red Scare Industries. While their earlier material always maintained an indie label grit, Brainless God is by all means a polished record, perhaps even seamless. While a move to incredibly high production quality has been lauded in cases such as Nirvana's Nevermind, the raw power that is Direct Hit! is so deeply ingrained within the music that it still shows clearly throughout.
From the album-wide melodic theme to full band harmonies, strategically-placed bell strikes, and layered tambourine parts to the group's chronic keyboard and organ arrangements, Brainless God is Tommy meets The Black Parade meets modern melodic punk: a love tale conceptually set amidst a nuclear apocalypse & the end of the world. Couple this with their use of videography (look up "Brainless God: Act One" and "Brainless God: Chapter V") and you have a complete artistic experience for this rock opera, which might be the biggest release of 2013. This group is going nowhere but up. You can catch them at Riot Fest this Sunday in Chicago.
Modern Baseball released its first full-length album, Sports, last November and the album is now on its second pressing through Run For Cover Records and Lame-O Records. The band has steadily gained recognition in the indie music scene since the release of their video for "The Weekend."
Sports is quite a different animal than most albums, as is the band itself, and features a plethora of gang choruses and songs ranging from standard rockers to ballads to acoustic sing-a-longs. While the record is definitely nostalgic, the four-piece isn't seeking gimmicks or revivalist tendencies with their music. From sampling a cell phone's voicemail in "Hours Outside in the Snow" to songs about Twitter ("@Chl03k"), lyrics about locking text messages to save them ("Re-Done"), use of emoticons ("Seeya Sucker") and references to Facebook ("I Think You Were In My Profile Picture Once"), the album is very much about the modern young adult condition. It takes an earnest effort to not make such lyric choices feel tacky, childish or amateur. Modern Baseball skillfully dodges all of these traps just as they do genre tags, playing a blend of indie rock with 90s emo with a modern indie punk feel.
The band lives together in a house venue they run in Philadelphia, where they go to college and tour on school breaks. I was lucky enough to catch them at a house show in Kalamazoo this past August and they're definitely on my "nicest people I've ever met" list. Buy Sports and catch them at a house show before their popularity explodes.