Kite Party’s Baseball Season

Most members of Kite Party hail from Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, home of the catcher’s mitt (seriously). While most of Pennsylvania experienced a golden era, baseball season in Tamaqua must have been part of the town’s self-esteem. It’s a hard to see sources of pride start to dim, and however Tamaqua was then, it has more recently fallen into the same lull that many PA towns and persons abide. Home’s always changing on you, but it’s never changing for you. 

Like a punk rock Bruce Springsteen, Edling has found a way to make small town troubles cinematic. The airier, more unique moments of Baseball Season could add a unique gravitas to the moment of listening, appropriate for trips back home or pounding on your steering wheel (or both). Songs like “Jaws of Life” walk you somewhere, and others like “Hightower” makes you wish for a fixed gear. Baseball Season nails a charge function for both internal and external energy. It’s reminiscent of shoegaze however it doesn’t draw your eyes down. It keeps what Kite Party has in a live show i.e. chins kept up with either minds floating or bodies pumping. 

Perhaps spurred by the band’s move to Philadelphia, singer Russell Edling often implies a lonely detachment, framing what seems to be a resentment of urban ugly motives. “I’ll do the things you only hope to,” sings Edling in “Arizona.” He concludes the penultimate track, “Jaws of Life,” with “look how ugly we’ve grown.”   

It’s hard-to-classify genre (something in itself) is another factor in the album’s charm. While it can seem metropolitan in how it starts big and spacious and then packs shit in, Kite Party, continues to be too Pennsylvanian to be the indie hipsters this album implies. While new music trends have been pushing bands away from a guitar-centrism, Baseball Season is one of few albums this year that really does the instrument justice as the rock of rock and roll. I don’t know, but when it’s trying to rock, it fucking rocks - without thoughtless aggression, every instrument getting hit hard. 

Rural Indie. PBR Rock. Basement-Core. Tell friends whatever, just get them to listen to this band. 

kiteparty.bandcamp.com