Lucky for life

Mod Lang lifts from the past while barreling into the present. What's their future?

The young Detroit band Mod Lang is comprised of Antonio Keka and Alex Belfie on alternating rhythm and lead guitars and vocals, Ava East on bass and vocals, and Ben Taber on drums. They self-describe as “Pop n Roll.” Lift the proverbial lid on their sweet and rousing debut album Borrowed Time and you’ll hear a complex blend of the Raspberries, Badfinger, Marc Bolan, mid-‘60s Beatles, pre-Tommy Who, Beat & Soul-era Everly Brothers, Tongue Twister-vibe Shoes, Rockpile, the Records, the Scruffs, Pezband, You Am I, Sloan, traces of the Wondermints, a couple chews of Bubblegum, a dollop of Glam, a generous sampling from the 1990s Yellow Pill compilations. And I’m just getting started.

Of course, reducing Mod Lang to their influences would be a crime. Mod Lang’s songs are vibrant and catchy, as fresh feeling and yet as eternal as a surprising breeze. Sweetness caught up with them over time. “I think all of us have always been obsessed with ‘60s stuff, but speaking for me personally, it was always like simple, garage, kind of meathead hard rock shit,” Keka remarked to Rocco Tenaglia III in see/saw, adding, “All the songs that did the garage rock stuff had the pop hooks, and I just never paid attention to any of that.” Their influences are rooted in the mid- to late ‘60s, but the band looks broadly about for good vibes no matter the source. “Pop music is awesome and its progression is really cool,” Belfie said. “I was just listening to Wire yesterday and I forgot how good they are. And it’s super poppy. There’s so much pop that I’ve neglected, until the last couple years, that extends past 1975.”

Keka and Belfie co-wrote all of the songs on Borrowed Time, blending ringing hooks, catchy melodies, robust harmonies, and driving arrangements. The album sets itself apart from like-spirited power pop records in part by the surprising lengths of the songs, anathema to the genre, many of which approach the four minute mark, allowing the savory sonic ingredients to blend and thicken. The pop hooks, interestingly, arrived late in the writing and recording process. “How we went about making the record was we recorded all the bass tracks at once and then they started working on all the vocals and overdubs a couple months later,” Taber (also known as Beej) remarked in see/saw. “And I think in all of the original tracks there wasn’t any of that ear candy, it really just happened in the overdub process.”

I was introduced to the band via the stage—they opened for Ty Segall at Majestic Theatre in Detroit a few weeks back, a show I wrote about here—and afterward listened to their dynamic album on repeat, a fun journey that I highly recommend. Their propulsive, winning performance onstage wasn’t so faithful to the studio tracks as to lack looseness and spontaneity, and by grooving to the album after seeing the band play the songs, I was rewarded with a kind of video log in my memory of this telegenic band that complemented the songs nicely.

Borrowed Time is sturdy top to bottom. “In Advance” opens with a stirring riff that graphically rises and falls, setting the tone for a song about ascending hopes and crashing realities. The song gets right to the point, opening with the chorus, the melody of which doubles the opening riff—

I’m giving up all I have to give to you
I’m taking out all the money I can use
You’re patching up all the walls I fell into
You’re changing out all the locks for someone new

—that says all you need to know about where the singer’s placing himself between denial and truth. The gorgeous harmonies and chiming guitars sweeten things, yet the singer’s definitely bummed. Belfie, who takes the lead vocal on this one, sings earnestly, yet with raw urgency, nailing the mood, unburdening himself yet charmingly, without rancor or bitterness, a kind of magic trick Mod Lang pulls off in nearly every song.

And they know how to have fun and groove, too. The lusty “Cocomoda” is a chugging rocker featuring Belfie and Keka interlocked in a startling evocation of steep Everly Brothers-style harmonies—think Phil and Don’s “Man with Money” era—punctuated by playful “wah wah wah” phrasings that emerge from the song’s sugary silliness. “TV Star,” one of two singles from the album (the other is the leadoff cut, “What I Can’t Have”), is another glam-groove, crunchy-guitar singalong, a paean to the titular culture figure with a tinge of satire (“TV star, you just can’t win / All that’s here has always been”). On some tunes, influences rise more evidently to the surface. The closer, “In The Morning,” evokes the kind of lovely, richly harmonic ballads that Paul McCartney breathes like air, and the irresistible “Fool In Love” suggests early Monkees in its acoustic-cum-Neil Diamond cool and jangly, Hollywood-style arrangement. (In a time-honored tradition, Mod Lang saved one of their juiciest tracks, the riff-driven, Bubblegum-y kiss off “3 + 1,” for a b-side.)

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And then there’s the matter of the band’s name. “Mod Lang” is, of course, a track on Big Star’s second album Radio City, released in 1974, a loose limbed, shambling tune strung together with lines from old Blues songs, “but Mod Lang is also short for modern language,” Keka remarked, with Belfie explaining, “It was a class that Chris Bell was taking at community college and thought would be a cool name for a song.” (East confessed that their band name was almost Kanga Roo, after a Big Star track from the fraught Third/Sister Lovers album.)

This lore is common to many music fans, especially those who worship at the Church of Power Pop. Big Star’s blend of Bell’s blissy pop smarts and Chilton’s angled, sometimes sour responses to the pop tradition of which he was part was wholly unique, and, over time, hugely influential. And Mod Lang doesn’t stop at their band name. Beyond evoking the sweetness and melancholy at the heart of Chilton and Bell’s best songs, Mod Lang quotes the Memphis band. In “Big House,” a rousing complaint about the shitty job market and low economic ceilings, they sing, “Big house on the corner of ‘Cash Now’ / And I’m gonna find a big car / ‘cause I’m gonna be a big star.” And the first line in the title track is “When my baby’s beside me…” (Cue it up.) Coincidences? I think not. In both tracks, Keka and Belfie summon Phil and Don again, anchoring the very ‘70s post-Beatles references in the very ‘50s pre-Beatles era, widening their canvas.

“Big Star is now virtually synonymous with power pop, the rock and roll subgenre rooted in pre-Pepper Beatles, early Byrds, and Mod-era Who and Kinks that, after hits by Badfinger and The Raspberries in the early 1970s, has seen only sporadic commercial successes in the ensuing decades despite being inspired by records that topped the radio charts and sold by the truckload.” So Bruce Easton wrote in his terrific 33 1/3 entry on Radio Star, published in 2009. “At the time of Radio City however, power pop hadn’t begun to ossify into an exercise in paint-by-numbers Rickenbacker-fueled nostalgia. It was simply a case of artists on both sides of the Atlantic making records that took great inspiration from The Beatles at a time when rock was still developing at almost warp speed and not looking back.” (Eaton quoted Chilton as observing, with withering clarity, “Power pop described the thing after the fact.”) Eaton acknowledged that Chilton, Bell, and Big Star drummer Jody Stephens wore an affinity for bands like Badfinger, the Raspberries, and Todd Rundgren, “but to lump the groups together, as is often done, is a mistake.” Big Star, as Eaton heard it, “twisted and shifted the forms just enough to add a palpable feeling of impending disintegration and anarchy to the mix.”

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Alex Chilton died in March of 2010. Four months later, producer, actor, and director Richard Mazda, who founded and operates the Secret Theatre in Queens, New York, invited me to contribute an essay on Chilton for a tribute to Chilton that he was staging. I happily accepted, eager to both pay my respects to the legendary musician and to work through my own ambivalent feelings about him and his influence. I titled the piece “Will You Be An Outlaw For My Love?”, a line from Chilton and Bell’s “Thirteen,” from Big Star’s 1972 debut album, #1 Record. A decade and a half later, I don’t think that I’d change much of what I wrote:

Much like Jay Gatsby to Nick Carraway, Alex Chilton existed to me first as rumor, then as myth. I grew up in the Washington D.C. area listening to “The Letter” on oldies stations, loving the blue-eyed soul and grabby hooks before I knew who the man was singing it. Throughout the 1980s Chilton was a ghost on my periphery, a hipster’s name spied on worn records and uttered reverently at WMUC, the college radio station where I had a weekly show. I loved the Replacements’ paean to him on Pleased To Meet Me, understood Paul Westerberg’s worshipful crush, and I played it a lot; I loved the Cramps and Panther Burns records that Chilton produced, the primal vibe and the looks cast backward and forward. I knew that Big Star had brought jagged 1960s psych-folk into the difficult, differently-tuned Seventies; I’d marveled at the blissy guitars on Radio City, and knew the group’s classics, the mini pop opera of “O My Soul,” the jangle and accelerated heartbeat of “When My Baby’s Beside Me,” the descending chorus in “September Gurls” that sounds like nothing less than sorrow scored.

Chilton remained an indie gadfly whom I couldn’t ignore—but I was busy worshipping others. I’d spin tracks from Like Flies On Sherbet and High Priest and wonder what I was missing. I was listening to garage rock & roll, roots rock, later-generation power pop, but only later in the 1990s when I started paying closer attention did I discover that Chilton’s musical threads ran through most of the sounds that I cherish. Reinvestigating, I tried (in vain) to block out the heavy breathing that I’d heard from critics; as William Ruhlmann says about Big Star’s first album, “The problem with coming in late on an artwork lauded as ‘influential’ is that you’ve probably encountered the work it influenced first, so its truly innovative qualities are lost.” That’s true—my way back to Chilton was paved with Jonathan Richman, Ben Vaughn, and R.E.M. songs—but coming late afforded me my own time frame, less concerned as I was now with catching up than with slowing down and really listening to the music, post Chilton Myth.

What gave me a greater appreciation were the Big Star tunes that I was really hearing for the first time: the folky country pop of “Watch The Sunrise;” the defiantly desperate tone of “You Can’t Have Me;” the haunted, nearly unlistenable “Holocaust;” the love lyrics in “Nighttime” devolving into nihilism and fear, affected by the haunting echo of strings, slide guitar, and vocals; the dry, death-rattle sound in “Big Black Car.” “She’s A Mover” is one of the few introspective dance records that I’ve ever heard—and I wasn’t sure that such a hybrid was possible. Big Star’s semi-rousing take on the Kinks’ “‘Till The End Of The Day” lets go a bit more, but the band’s overall sound was guarded, however jangly—wary, however embracing. I followed this sound and attitude through Chilton’s solo albums, through others’ appreciations of him, and I better understood and respected the man and his music.

“Oh my soul, just hit me if I get on a roll,” You Am I sing in “Guys, Girls, Guitars” on their #4 Record. The guy they’re singing about has written 51 songs about a girl who split 50 weeks ago, but “it’s only a 2 AM tune” and “the seventh chord just keeps getting older.” The barely-disguised tribute to Alex Chilton nails the aloof, melodic sadness of much of Chilton’s catalog, pop and anti-pop communiqués from a misfit who’s armed with tunes, a guitar, and a wry, fractured, wholly unique way of seeing things. It took me a while to understand what I could of that guy, the musical outlaw. A part of Alex Chilton remains a bright, brooding enigma to me. And that’s about right.

How long the shadow that Chilton and Big Star may or may not cast over Mod Lang, as well as their contemporary Pop n Roll artists, remains to be seen.

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A couple of weeks after I caught Mod Lang in Detroit, I was able to see the band again, this time in Chicago, at Lincoln Hall, where they opened for King Tuffy. The set list was pretty much the same, I think—save for their substitute of a streak through “Summertime Blues” for “Ramblin’ Rose”—though they traveled with a different yet no less capable rhythm section, Juan Galaviz on bass and Jason on drums. (Regrettably, I couldn’t make out Jason’s last name in introductions from the stage.)

In Detroit, I’d glimpsed Mod Lang only on the stage, where every rock star is six feet tall or taller. When I passed Keka and Belfie loitering at the bar before their set in Chicago, I was struck by their compact sizes—thirty minutes later, under the lights, with their diminutive heights and bell bottom jeans they gave the impression of a Saturday-morning-cartoon band. Halfway through their set, I surprised myself by reckoning with affectionate pride as I watched them; I think it’s because they struck me as so similar to the twenty somethings I’ve taught in the classroom for so many years. Upon closer inspection, Keka looks as much like Gino Vannelli to me now as Marc Bolan and Wayne Kramer, a sublime blend of rock and roll heartthrob, I’d say. Their onstage jokes lost none of their appealing corn during the four hour drive from the Motor City: they enthused about local Dicey’s Pizza (“Dicey’s Pizza ain’t dicey!” Keka crowed on mic, like a teenager) and at one point in the set shared sticks of gum with each other, politely asking the crowd if they wanted some, too.

When told by Tenaglia that Mod Lang is the first Detroit band that he could play for his mom, Keka responded, “I love hearing that we’re family-friendly.” Leaning in, East added, “It’s really great to have a broad audience and, although it’s not intentional, there’s nothing wrong with it being favorable to many people. The more people that you can communicate with who have a positive reaction, that’s just a beautiful thing to put out in the world. We’re not intentionally making music for your mom, but your mom will probably like it.”

Taber remarked: “That’s a good promo!”

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Image of Mod Lang adapted from “TV Star” 45 sleeve

“Alex Chilton of The Box Tops” by Karen via Flickr

Photos of Mod Lang at Lincoln Hall, Chicago, May 13, 2026 © Joe Bonomo