"With all of our respective bands currently working to promote records of our own, we thought it would be nice to come together and try to use any attention that we've recieved as bands to help give back to the community. Thus, on Valentine's Day of this year, Modern Baseball, Old Gray, Julia Brown, and The Hundred Acre Woods have decided to release a four way digital split, donating any and all proceeds to V-Day, a global charity to end violence against women and girls," stated Cam Boucher of Old Gray as Topshelf and these artists wanted to ensure that this 4-way V-Day split offered more than just romantic nuances and stories of love and heartache. The genuine cause aside, the album turned out to be a charming acoustic take on issues with a more endearing twist than a punk spin.
The Hundred Acre Woods wax poetic with "Base Of My Heart" as they focused on an acoustic setting that rang more along the indie-alternative vibe. In a compilation of warmth and love, this song remained steeped in the madness known as the game of love where the guy professes how long he's prepared to wait on his one true soulmate. It's filled with cliched overtones but still pans out nicely. Julia Brown's "Nobody" then follows in stark contrast, as the tune comes off rougher, in production and in its message, of the dynamic mystery and misery of romance. It's tone bore flatter and doesn't resonate as much, which had more to do with the sound, than the depressive and cynical message offered.
Modern Baseball then reignite the spunk of the record as they spoke of that unending nerve, yearning and craving for attention when adolescent love comes knocking as a teen. They take a more painstaking stance in measuring the immaturity that sometime envelopes young love as well as the ensuing growth in "Phone Tag." Listening to a song about a two-year long distance relationship and the awkwardness and unfamiliarity that the separation bred because of that distance proved a great storytelling point.
Old Gray wrap the split with "Hands Like These," with their sense of depicting romance and love as something that's far from the fairy tales in books and movies, and they don't do it in that mundane and trite style that most bands portray heartache and agony. The split's a decent mix of good and bad when it comes to hearing the bands spew their thoughts on what makes the heart tick. Throw in a great cause, and grabbing the compilation isn't the worst decision you could make so early in the year.