Month: February 2020

My current music taste encompasses many, many genres. However, I mainly prefer to listen to alternative rock on a day to day basis. My infatuation with this type of music starts with my discovery of the band Modern Baseball about five years ago. Modern Baseball’s emo and pop punk sound eased me out of my limited musical insight and encouraged me to find new bands and artists to listen to.

Modern Baseball is an American rock band that is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The band formed in 2011 when high school friends Brendan Lukens and Jake Ewald started making music as an acoustic duo. Later on, Sean Huber (drums) and Ian Farmer (bass) also joined the band. Initially, the band played house shows and around Drexel University and made their way up the basement scene. To this day, the band has released three albums with the most recent one being Holy Ghost (2016). Moreover, their second album, which was released in 2014, reached #97 on Billboard 200. The genres of music that their songs fall into are folk punk, emo, pop punk, rock, and indie rock. One especially interesting thing to note about this band is that their name was inspired by an old book owned by Ewald’s dad which was titled Modern Baseball Techniques that was found the evening the original duo decided to form a band.

Over the years, Modern Baseball has toured with other similar-sounding acts such as Joyce Manor, The Front Bottoms, Brand New, The Wonder Years, and Knuckle Puck. Unfortunately, this band unofficially split up in 2017 after calling off a planned tour due to mental health reasons. The band has since then announced that they are on an indefinite hiatus and have no future plans of playing with eachother again (unless they feel like it).

Main themes found within Modern Baseball’s music include romantic relationships, mental illness, addiction, friendship, youth, etc. Although Modern Baseball writes and sings about many serious things, their songs contain a refreshing, hopeful, and fun atmosphere. Some songs are heavier than others, but generally their music relays awkward and hazy teenage memories– Sweaty hands. Your first relationship. Drunken college parties. Unforgettable regrets. This coming of age period sparks different experiences within everyone but the general feeling of nostalgia, emotion, and edginess permeates each Modern Baseball song.

One of my favorite songs by Modern Baseball is called “The Weekend.” This song focuses on the importance of having a supportive friend group that will always be there for you. No matter what situation you’re in, what you’re wearing, or how you’re feeling it’s an amazing relief to know that you have people to rely on for a good time. Sometimes the world passes us by so fast or anxiety heightens negative emotions, but leaning upon friends can be the greatest solution to these problems as Ewald sings “You got a smile that could light this town/ And we might need it/ Cause it gets dark around here/ Real dark around here.”

What is true creativity? Can anything truly be original if most of our ideas are based off of other ideas? In a world full of societal pressure and conformity, can we really say that original thought truly still exists somewhere? One of the greatest things about music is that it stays frozen in time and remains unaffected by the environment around it. A song can be played over and over again forever, and it doesn’t change.

I believe that the artist Little Peep has held up to these standards of originality as he created his own genre of “emo rap” and upheld his own personality throughout his fame. It is easy to give into the standards of what the music industry wants, but Peep constantly turned against what was normal and continued to do things that made him personally happy. For example, his style of brightly colored hair, face tattoos, red nail polish, and androgynous demeanor may seem bizarre for some, but this only contributes to his interesting character overall.

Lil Peep, or Gustav Elijah Åhr was born on November 1, 1996 in Allentown, Pennsylvania and grew up in Long Island, New York, and he later died on November 15, 2017 at age 21. Both of his parents were Harvard graduates who divorced when he was a teenager. His mother was an elementary school teacher and his father was a college history professor. During his childhood, Peep’s father was mostly absent and so his mother was someone that he often looked to for support (His nickname “Peep” was given to him by his mother when he was a kid). Additionally, he was not too fond of formal schooling and eventually dropped out of high school and pursued an online diploma. Growing up, Peep favored punk rock culture, smoking marijuana, and holding a negative attitude towards authority. At age 17, Peep got his first face tattoo of a broken heart in order to help motivate him to make music and be successful in it as he explained in one interview that “a tattoo on your face…is gonna stop you from getting a lot of jobs.”

Peep’s style of music is best described as lo-fi rap mixed with third-wave emo, trap, alternative rock, and pop punk. Common themes in his songs include depression, anxiety, drugs, sour relationships, girls, drug use, and his deepest negative thoughts. His music breaks barriers because of how blunt and raw it is, as Peep doesn’t hesitate to speak about his suicidal thoughts or anger against those who looked down upon him. For example, in his song “Cry Alone” he sings “I wanna burn my old high school into the ground/ I hate everybody in my hometown/ Tell the rich kids to look at me now.” Peep’s manner was absolutely controversial, vulnerable, and truly authentic, which is one of the main reasons behind his fame. 

One of my favorite songs by Peep is “Cobain” which is a simple, short, and catchy trap song that features Lil Tracy. This song has a moody and sappy exterior that is combined with elements of trap rap. Peep’s sad and self-pitying vocals flow about the song as trap beats accompany his aching lyrics. Some people say that Peep was destined to soon be the “Kurt Cobain” of this generation. Peep’s music isn’t necessarily pretty or should be taken as an example, but he presented himself how he wanted to and lived his own truth, whether it was as Gus or Lil Peep.

Sometimes we find amazing things in the most unusual places or when we least expect it. Years ago I remember watching some videos on YouTube and a video by the artist Grimes was recommended to me, so I figured why not go ahead and click on it. I feel like we have all been recommended something weird, yet quite equally intriguing by the YouTube algorithm. Grimes is by far one of the most unique artists that I have discovered as her music is more EDM but also has tones of anti-pop. Her high pitched and ethereal voice clashes with the heavy electronic beats and sounds that she uses in the background, but once you listen to some of her songs this combination sounds pleasingly imperfect.

Claire Elise Boucher, better known as Grimes, was born on March 17, 1988 in Vancouver Canada. She attended McGill University in Montreal and double majored in neuroscience and Russian, but later dropped out before finishing her degree. Boucher is self-taught in her music endeavors and visual art skills, and started recording music under the moniker “Grimes” in 2007. To this day Boucher has released 4 albums, and is expected to release another one titled Miss Anthropocene in February 2020. Her rise to fame is due to the success of her third album Visions as its two top singles “Genesis” and “Oblivion” blew up around the internet and in the music world. Additionally, her following album Art Angels (2015), which featured several different characters that were supposed to represent the persona of Grimes, was named the #1 album of the year by many musical publications. Recently in her personal life, she started dating Elon Musk in 2018 after making some pun on Twitter, and is now expecting a child.

One of the most intriguing things about Grimes is her passion and dedication to create music that hasn’t been popularized before. One could say that she might even be the pioneer of her own genre of dream pop, R&B, electronic music, and hip hop. Her process in making music might be quite extreme and stressful as in one interview she mentions that in the making of Visions she locked herself in her apartment for three consecutive weeks to fully record her entire album. This tortuous recording session included a nine day period without food, sleep, company, and daylight (as she blacked out her windows), and also involved a lot of drugs. She mentioned that this writing process was destructive yet significantly contributed to the album’s success.

Grimes not only combines elements from all of these genres of music but also explores the meaning and visual aspect behind what the combination of sounds represents. In one interview she explains her process of making music as taking inspiration from a whole store of music that has been available and built upon for years and years. She can take a certain guitar riff or melody from one song and use it within her own music to create something entirely different that also shares some of the history or implications of that particular sound. Grimes finds the genre of electronic music very appealing as it does not involve technically playing physical instruments, which allows her to be more fluid in her sound and style rather than sticking to one certain thing.

If you’d like to check out this artist, I’d recommend first listening to “Oblivion,” “Kill V. Maim,” and “Flesh without Blood.” Enjoy!