Like a Championship Team, the Baseball Project’s New Album Is Unstoppable

At the risk of iterating shopworn arguments about form and content, let me point out the discrepancy between the two, at least for this listener, when it comes to the music of the Baseball Project. When news came over the transom — or, as aficionados might have it, from the rubber — that the band’s fourth album was nearing release, I marked the calendar.Yet while the Baseball Project’s first three volumes — “Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails,” “High and Inside,” and “3rd” — are an integral component of my music library, I don’t know a thing about baseball and remain, if not oblivious to the game’s attractions, indifferent to its appeal. Having been dragged to a single Mets game back when the stadium was still named after William Shea, I sat in the nose-bleed seats and took note of the field’s geometry and the precision by which the players maneuvered its parameters. Otherwise, my knowledge of America’s greatest pastime is nonexistent. What I do know about is punk rock.The Baseball Project is counted, for those of us once ensconced at the margins of popular culture, as a supergroup. Back in the day, my friends and I pored over the latest offerings from the Dream Syndicate, R.E.M., and the Young Fresh Fellows as if they were vinyl equivalents of the Talmud. We knew that Steve Wynn, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Scott McCaughey had gleaned every last lick from “Nuggets” — that is to say, the canon of 1960s garage rock — and that the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and Big Star were touchstones. Yet who knew they were grateful to their moms and dads for not trashing their baseball card collections? That’s not punk at all.Beginning with “Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails” (2008) — terminology that can be deciphered, should one be interested, at the official website for Major League Baseball — these rock ‘n’ rollers shelved their day jobs in order to indulge their passion for baseball. Propelled by drummer Linda Pitmon, Mr. Wynn’s wife and a self-confessed sucker for pinstripes, the Baseball Project proved that pop music usages sharpened, streamlined, and transmogrified over time could be fitted to the story of Harvey Haddix and his near perfect game or the bittersweet tale of Larry Yount’s short-lived career as a pro. Then there’s Mr. McCaughey’s melancholy encomium to Carl Mays, whose pitch for the 1920s Yankees felled Ray Chapman of the team once known as the Cleveland Indians, resulting in the game’s only on-field fatality. Narrated by the title character from behind the grave, “Here Lies Carl Mays” juxtaposes the peacefulness of Cleveland’s Lake View Graveyard with a curse presumably set into motion by “that killer pitch.” Pretty hard stuff for a pop song.Having said that, the most surprising thing about the Baseball Project is its sense of humor. Admittedly, Mr. McCaughey’s Young Fresh Fellows were a snarky outfit — their best-known song imagined the Christian pop singer Amy Grant getting busy with Barry White, yuk-yuk. But Mr. Wynn’s songs about desperate lives written for the Dream Syndicate didn’t lend themselves to laughter, nor was R.E.M. necessarily known for its sparkling wit. Lilting melodies and folkish rondels, yes; knee-slappers, no. But the Baseball Project is loose-limbed, unpretentious, and eager for a joke. The songs admit to winking musical readymades — yes, a stadium organ figures into them — and lyrics that abound with good will and, or so one likes to think, a graciousness that comes with age. Would the ennui-besotted Mr. Wynn, circa-1981, have dared a rhyme as unlikely as “card-carrying member of Mensa” and “MVP trophies on my credenza”? Consider, as well, the raucous title opener for the new album “Grand Salami Time!” in which Mr. McCaughey runs through a compendium of “genius/knucklehead announcer catchphrases.” Even the most doctrinaire of Dadaists would have to smile at lines like, “He kicks and deals, a screaming yellow yakker” and “Hey! Ain’t the beer cold. How ’bout a Doozie Marooney.”None of the Baseball Project’s albums are bad, but “Grand Salami Time!” is a distinct cut above “3rd,” which betrayed a thinness of inspiration. The new record is unstoppable — the result, perhaps, of nine years of preparation. Among the highlights are Mr. Wynn channeling Mississippi John Hurt for his tribute to Jose Fernandez in “That’s Living” and the spooky groove of “The Stuff,” in which we learn how vaseline, pine tar, and saliva “give my curveball that extra bite/Make my sinker slide out of sight.”What rye, mustard, salami, and Grandma have to do with baseball, I don’t know, but they’re all good things, as is this joyous and rollicking record.The Baseball Project’s “Grand Salami Time!” is being released by Omnivore Recordings on June 30.

Like a Championship Team, the Baseball Project’s New Album Is Unstoppable

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