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"Every time I've completed a song, it feels like something huge has happened in my life, like a wedding or a first kiss or a graduation," says Aaron Robinson, singer/guitarist and songwriter in Murfreesboro/Nashville, Tennessee's Imaginary Baseball League. "But as much as it feels like a personal accomplishment, it dually feels like an unexpected gift."
Songs, to their writer, will always be precious. A first kiss, a gift, the products of sweat and tears and gnarled fingertips from playing until fingers move on their own. But the trick is, can that preciousness, the emotional weight of the writing, be transferred to you?

At a dusty warehouse in an industrial park on Long Island, Imaginary Baseball League set up to play for a predominantly punk and hardcore scene. Untattooed, unpierced and unknown to this group of kids, their task-winning the crowd over-was daunting. But one by one the audience focused as the band started to play, and one by one the signs of apathy dropped like dead weights; idle conversations halted, lingerers outside sped in, eyes and ears opened wide. Copies of the band's Cardiact EP (on their own What A Waste Recordings) in hand, nearly every kid in the place showed up later that same night where they were playing a county away. And several months later at the Knitting Factory in New York City, and a few after that when Imaginary Baseball League were one of few unsigned bands invited to play the 2003 CMJ Music Marathon.
The band's greatest strength is this resonance-the unshakeable lure in songs of life and loss and love, built on moody melodies and elastic rhythms that grab steadfast hold of your hidden romantic. "I'm just trying to put my own sadness and joy into songs in hopes that someone else can relate," Robinson says. "Mostly I concern myself with relationships-not just my own and not just romantic ones-and searching for the chemistry it takes to make them work right." Chemistry, also, is key to Imaginary Baseball League's potency. A team at its best will sync like cogs in a precision motor, weave into position like seasoned detectives sneaking up on a crime in progress. When Robinson's voice grows to a heart-wrenching wail, drummer Ryan Rayborn and bassist Ben Evans ratchet the pace and tension, pulling back and releasing as effected guitar and keyboard sound designs from Keith Childrey rise into focus. It's a graceful synchronicity, and an agile meshing of four very distinct personalities: Robinson's classic, catchy pop; Rayborn's off-kilter and hyper-emotive sense of rhythm; Evans' strong melodic anchor; and Childrey's creative atmosphere and texture. "The four of us come from pretty different backgrounds, and that hodge-podges for the best or for the worst," says Rayborn. Robinson continues, "Business decisions come up, creative rifts start to form, feelings get hurt, and somehow the songs get better. I think that's what keeps us going. We rely on eventually finding the common ground that keeps us working together."
As the band's collective personality has gelled, the songs have grown in leaps-most evident on their debut LP, Revive, self-released in the Spring of 2004. Recorded at Cylo Studios in Nashville by Chris Common and Geoff Koval and mixed by Childrey, the album's 13 tracks flow from a driving Britrock sound on "Don't Call At All" to lovelorn pop on "The One Infallible," and into the lush expanses of "Statistics," keeping an elegant cohesion throughout.
The band's first two EPs, The Letter and Cardiact (both recorded by Childrey), earned Imaginary Baseball League invites to share stages with national acts like Songs:Ohia, Wheat, The Six Parts Seven, The Gloria Record, Year Of The Rabbit, The Features and Starflyer 59, and airplay on Steve Lamacq's influential BBC Radio1 show In The City in the U.K. The band will support Revive with several tours-including Midwest and East Coast tours in late May-and a national publicity and college radio campaign.

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