If you’ve been a fan of Modern Baseball since the Sports EP, you know the band is quite fond of writing about high school stories and girls with hoodies, the kind of lyrics you’d get tattooed on your 16-year-old self. Contrary to popular assumptions, the new album, titled Holy Ghost, is far from the normal bands creations.
Before Holy Ghost was born, Brendan Lukens announced that because of his anxiety and depression, the band would be forced to cancel their Australian tour. Fortunately, these experiences Lukens endured helped create the powerful lyrics and music featured on the album. Jake Ewald also experienced a great deal of loss around the time of creating the album. Rather than sulking in self-pity and depression, the band drew the courage to create the album, which features 11 songs cornering their journey towards healing.
The album is split between Ewald beginning the first 6 tracks and Lukens on the remaining 5. Ewald illustrates the difficulty of loving between distances in “Wedding Singer” and “Note to Self” suggesting he would rather be with someone who’s not physically with him (“Where I want to be still seems a thousand miles away/But pretending we feel safe right here gets harder everyday”). The distance between him and someone he loves is enough to tear him apart in “Mass.”
Lukens begins his part of the album with the transformations he has made in his life in the previous months, admitting that he feels most safe when he’s alone in “Breathing in Stereo.” The lyrics Lukens creates seem to be his subconscious thoughts, constantly questioning his own statements. Yet he grows throughout the album, displaying this in “What if…” stating that he won’t wait for anyone anymore. The album is concluded with the most powerful message that Lukens and the band is “not just another face.”
The album as a whole is most definitely the strongest piece of art Modern Baseball has released due to the rawness of the experiences that created the music.