Marietta/ /Modern Baseball - Couples Therapy

http://whereismarietta.bandcamp.com/album/couples-therapy
http://modernbaseballpa.bandcamp.com/album/couples-therapy


So today is a day of firsts within this blog. For the first "first", this is an actual review. The albums preceding this one were "reviewed" on the first listen of the album, with maybe a couple songs played more than once for reassurance. The second "first", this is the first split to be reviewed here.

"Couples Therapy" starts off with a Superbad reference, a wonderful approach to a rather fun/sad split. Now, it's a bit hard to describe the music on this split in just a few words since it's a split, but I think playfully sad is the best I could come up with. The lyrics show a certain disdain, but the music behind them and the way the lyrics are dished out give more of an upbeat math-y tone for Marietta, while Modern Baseball has lyrics focusing either on an interesting youth or a love once had. It'll be easier to explain in the song analysis, so I guess I better start that.

The uptempo math guitar with the fun-beat drum in "Yeah Yeah, Utah" might make the listener believe that this might be a happy song, little do they know (unless they listen to the lyrics...) that it really isn't. It's pretty sad. I might be wrong in my interpretation, but I feel like it's about a car crash on a highway, and the following funeral. But it sounds so happy! I might just have to chalk it up as the saddest song I've ever had fun listening to, I mean genuine fun. It kind of made me want to dance, honestly.  "Green Call Her Sims" starts off sounding sort of like something "Look Mexico" might make, happy and upbeat again, and then it's followed immediately by another set of amazingly depressing lyrics. Now, I'm going to be honest, the vocals might be hard for some to get into. But in all reality, they're so able to give off the emotion of the lyrics it's insane. They're more than fitting, and possibly my favorite thing about the band next to that lovely math/post-rock guitar.

Onto Modern Baseball's part of the split, "Hope" starts off with an acoustic ballad sound, and transforms into a heavier sound, perfectly embracing the obvious over-tone of a once sided argument. It's wonderfully trapping, and just beautifully natural. It's sad, it's angry, it so readily pulls the listener into the song.  "It's Cold Out Here" seems to be more about teenage years, primarily in the love direction. It's not necessarily sad, so much as it playfully despondent. The lyrics give a sort of feeling of simply not caring, and of how strange life is. The final part of the song gives an idea of the feeling of telling someone how you feel and how awful non-reciprocated love feels, and how distancing it can feel. Quite possibly my favorite song on the split. I love it.

I would suggest this album to anybody who's ever lived before, and I assume you're one of those people. So check it out, and while you're at it check out their other EP's, they're really something special.