Modern Baseball, Kentish Town Forum, gig review: Getting by with a little help from their friends

The Philadelphia music scene, from which Modern Baseball sprang and can be now considered flag-bearers, is nothing if not supportive.

Spend some time reading interviews or scrolling through social media, and it all seems like one big family – everyone wears each other's t-shirts, everyone's band is everyone else's favourite band. And if ever this four-piece pop-punk outfit needed support, it's now.

Days before this European tour began, the band's co-founder, Brendan Lukens, posted on social media to say he wouldn't be joining, rather staying at home to focus on his mental health.

It's something that he and the band have contended with as they hurtled away from Philly basement shows and home-recorded YouTube videos to 1300-word features in the New York Times and sold-out shows around the world, all in the space of a few years.

That experience has coloured their musical journey. On Sports, the 2012 debut album, Lukens and fellow vocalist Jake Ewald sang about girls, a lot. The music, while not without its emotional heft, had a breezy adolescence to it. But on Holy Ghost, released last year, the lyrical content cast greater light on Lukens' interior struggles, as well as Ewald's own exploration of personal loss. Those songs make-up the first third or so of tonight's show, with the guitars dense and murky, and drum beats with a lower tempo.

But those hooks, the ones that made them so popular, are still there, like the cunningly simple guitar lead on "Wedding Singer". Good hooks set great pop punk away from forgettable pop punk, and if there's one musical take-away from tonight, it's that Modern Baseball have them in bucket-loads.

In Lukens' absence, the band have had to adapt, and do so brilliantly, calling upon that support network. The band's guitar tech, Nick, is an admirable stand-in on guitar for most of the night, while members from the two support bands, Thin Lips and the Superweaks (also from Philly, where else?) drop in to help where they can.

There's a buoyant rendition of "Rock Bottom", while two giddy fans from the front row are called up to sing "The Weekend", off Sports. (Somehow, during the outro, the riff to "Sweet Child O' Mine" finds its way in, too).

On "Your Graduation" – the song which really pulled Modern Baseball from cult status to somewhere near the mainstream – drummer Sean Huber leaves the kit to deliver a snarlingly gleeful vocal. And there's even a cover of The Killers' "When You Were Young", which sees bassist Ian Farmer doing his best Brandon Flowers impression. It’s a good one.

But there's a particularly poignant moment when Chrissy Tashjian, from Thin Lips, comes out to sing "Just Another Face".

The closer on Holy Ghost, it's Lukens' stark reflection on mental illness, on listless self-loathing, on the support of others and, as Tashjian sings tonight, on realising that it's time "to confront this face-to-face".

What's clear tonight is that Lukens' has a band that cares about him, and crowd that idolises him, and a network of friends and fellow musicians there to support him. Let's hope we see him back on stage soon.