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My main complaint with Modern Baseball's "You're Going to Miss it All" is that I feel they're the ones who have missed. They missed an opportunity to make a great record and for the duration of this album I kept wishfully wondering what could have been as opposed to the mediocrity of what was.

I mean, on the surface everything you could want in a modern pop punk album is here; self depreciating lyrics, an off key vocalist and neat little melodies. But much like I feel the band conveys on the surface, a self mocking of emotion and a tongue in cheek approach (which often strays into tongue out to the listener territory) there are deeper problems aloof.

What I mean by this is that the band don't fully embrace any of the defining characteristics of emotionally driven pop punk and instead almost halfheartedly float between angst and messing around. At times, the album almost feels as if it were made ironically. The self depreciating lyrics lack subtlety and depreciate the overall content as it is impossible to take them seriously, as I'm sure the band itself haven't.
If you can't take your own musical product seriously, then why would you expect that from others? Here's an example of lyrics that could easily have been written for this album;

I went to see a girl
She was a girl with black hair and black heart
I met her at the park, I was wearing shoes
Those shoes were on my feet, when she gave me the boot

Instead of adopting a less-is-more approach, the band opt to spell everything out to the last detail and take away the element of relatability and empathy. In the effort to strive towards being constantly humorous, they often just look stupid, making a lot of the same mistakes that post-Pinkerton Weezer have.

Don't get me wrong, this is a quintessential Bandcamp release. So, perhaps that's why it is the way it is. We live in an era where it's easier to make fun of problems rather than embrace them and sing about them. Perhaps that's why the vocalists (there are actually two of them vying for the position of class clown) often sound like they could be Michael Stipe's sons, rolling their eyes towards their friends to let them know they were self-mocking whilst at the same time, winking at the camera to see if they had heard that last little quip they chucked in about Instagram.

Positively, there are bright moments, most tracks open with sharp, to-the-point melodies and progression which perks you up after the dreary conclusion of the previous song, but alike most elements in this album, what starts with promise usually fizzles out pretty quickly. With each track, I optimistically thought, this'll be the one, this is where the record will really find its feet. And it does at times, the fifth and sixth track in particular see a mood shift towards taking themselves more seriously, and they prove that when they want to, they can produce.

I feel like I'm focusing mostly on the front pairings faults here, don't get me wrong their quirkiness and dryness can be enjoyable. I really like the opening part on 'Apartment' for example. But they're really shown up by the guest vocalist on the track 'Your Graduation' who injects the raw energy that this record has been crying out for from the beginning. It turns out the guest vocalist was actually the drummer. For fuck sake.
I wish the frontmen from Modern Baseball would actually sing more instead of trying to narrate ironically the goings on of their adolescence.

As far as musicianship goes, there's nothing to complain about, it's well put together and there are several nice moments, usually after a lackluster chorus, where the clashing of the guitars get an opportunity to show through, but they're too few and far between to register this record a higher mark.

Not as bad as I probably made it sound, but more an exercise in frustration than anything. If the band manages to start taking itself seriously, maybe in turn I'll be able to take them seriously, until then they won't rise above a novelty listen.

3/5.