The 2018 Jester One Music Top 20 Countdown - #10

#10. The Night Game - The Outfield



The Night Game are a "alternative new wave" group out of Boston, MA with a sound similar to a lot of their contemporaries. Despite the fact that you could auto-generate most of these alt-synth-pop acts (see Miike Snow, The Band Camino, St Lucia, etc), they managed to put out a fairly solid record debut, with other hits like "The Photograph" and "Bad Girls Don't Cry".  Apparently the band came to the national focus when John Mayer (of all people) said he liked their single. Other bands in recent years have been vaulted into popularity for this same reason; I suppose that is just the world we live in now. Amusingly, I was actually searching to the 80s group The Outfield when I stumbled upon The Night Game and their recently released single with the same name. Being a baseball fan, I figured I might as well give the song a shot before getting back to what I was initially searching.


 It was one of those "omg, remember this" moments (for reference, I was on the couch playing Destiny 2, fighting off the underground Vex prison guards on my day off, a Tuesday). It was a song that I felt the need to spin about six more times before moving on and deciding to listen to the record.  Martin Johnson has a nice voice and can hit a wide variety of notes that blend together with the keyboards and drums of the song. The song is about chasing a lover who is difficult to get, and the chorus call of "far away" makes for the perfect summer sing-a-long. Due to Mayer's mention, the song racked up 5 million streams (3m more than the next most played song) and looks to be a solid springboard for future music making. The video follows a man around a rainy town with captions reading lyrics along the bottom in multiple languages.


 Favorite line: "I always swore that I would get to you some day, I'm getting closer but I'm still so far away, you got me standing in the outfield".









Title: The Outfield
Artist: The Night Game
Album: The Night Game
 



Previous #10s
2017: The National - Carin at the Liquor Store
2016: Miike Snow - Genghis Khan
2015: The Wombats - Give Me A Try
2014: Cut Copy - We Are Explorers
2013: The 1975 - The City
2012: Animal Kingdom - Strange Attractor
2011: FM Static - F.M.S.T.A.T.I.C
2010: Muse - Resistance
2009: Five Finger Death Punch - Bad Company