Liner Notes (September 18th, 2020)
I never thought I’d be excited that it’s raining.
This week’s newsletter has some thoughts on music and entertainment I enjoyed this week, some thoughts on iOS 14, and a playlist of ten songs I enjoyed. This week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
Three Things
This week’s article was all about heading back to 2002 and reliving the first summer back from college and then my sophomore year. It’s the year of Tell All Your Friends, and our music scene starting to blow up in the mainstream. This was a fun year to reflect on; everything seemed so much easier. This article also really brought out the “oh god, I can’t believe it’s been 18 years.”
Today we’re premiering the new video from Broken Glowsticks on the website. This is the new side project from AJ Perdomo of The Dangerous Summer and comes highly recommended by me. AJ’s been in rare form lately where it seems like everything he’s cranking out is gold. I still spin Mother Nature regularly, and all these new songs are right up there in quality.
This week saw the release of iOS 14. The prominent headlining feature is “widgets” and being able to mix up the home screen in all kinds of new ways. I’ve been playing around with a few things this week and messing up my muscle memory for where apps are in the process. It will take a while to get used to the new normal and feel out how I want to use the device and where to put things. As a whole, I like a lot of the changes. I use a lot of Shortcuts, especially from widgets, and while I really like that you don’t get thrown into the Shortcuts app to run them, that the alerts now come from the top of the screen, and with a much slower animation, really bugs me. The phones are so big these days, trying to get a finger up to the top of the screen one-handed just isn’t very easy. I’m going to need a few more weeks of using the phone on a regular basis before I know exactly how I want to set up out all my screens, but at the moment, I’ve got it set up like this. I’m going to play around with it some more today; I want to stack those widgets on the main page to be something else I can swipe to when the day is over, and I don’t need to see my task manager or calendar anymore—lots of fun new combos to obsess over.
Sponsor
Teenage Badass is a music-centric comedy revolving around the fictional rock band Stylo and the Murder Dogs. It was released today for rent or purchase.
Set in 2006, we follow Brad (Mcabe Gregg), a teenage drummer who dreams of making it big in a rock band. Brad and his single-mother Rae (Julie Ann Emery) struggle to get by as Brad refuses to give up. On a fluke, Brad joins a new band fronted by singer/songwriter Kirk Stylo. They land a shot to play on a local news show. With the town buzzing from their performance, Brad’s dreams inch closer when they’re asked to record with Jordan (Kevin Corrigan), a legendary local producer. Just as everything seems to be falling into place, a series of chaotic events threaten everything.
Also, keep an eye out for cameos from Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins and The Maine’s Pat Kirch.
In Case You Missed It
Music Thoughts
My favorite release today is the new album from Yours Truly. While the band name makes me think I’m talking about myself every time I type it, the music reminds me of being 17 and in love with pop-punk again. Between this and Stand Atlantic, I haven’t listened to pop-punk this consistently since cargo shorts were cool.
Movements and Knuckle Puck both released new albums today, I wasn’t feeling the early Movement singles, but maybe they’ll work better as a full album?
I’m still spinning the new Acceptance album at least a couple times each week, and they dropped the ballad “Bend the Light” today. This is one of my favorites from the album.
New singles from Sir Sly and Nightly are definitely worth your time.
Most of my listening this week was spent with Cold Years, PVRIS, Acceptance, and Slick Shoes.
Entertainment Thoughts
We enjoyed Unpregnant. I’m also now officially on team give Betty Who more acting roles. Her cameo was shockingly good.
TV-wise, we finished the first season of Doom Patrol (my second time seeing it), and now we can finally watch season two. I’m very excited. Ted Lasso continues to be an absolute delight of a show and a jolt of joy.
I read The Girl from Widow Hills, which was alright but forgettable. And now, I’m about halfway through The Undoing Project, which is fascinating. It’s about the duo that helped popularize heuristics, cognitive biases, and pull back how we think, rationalize, predict, and make all kinds of mental decisions (and errors). It’s excellent.
Random and Personal Stuff
I’ve never been more excited to wake up to rain. It’s still smokey, and I haven’t seen blue sky all week, but the rain is a very welcome sign.
I have been getting multiple spam “your social security number is blah blah blah” calls all week. I’ve been using Verizon’s Call Filter app to send them directly to voice mail, but seeing four or five spam voice mails each day is off the rails.
Ten Songs
Here are ten songs that I listened to and loved this week. Some may be new, some may be old, but they all found their way into my life during the past seven days.
Yours Truly - Together
Broken Glowsticks - Dancing on My Own
Acceptance - Bend the Light
Sir Sly - Material Boy
Nightly - The Car
PUP - Rot
Cold Years - Too Far Gone
Rise Against - Broken Dreams, Inc.
The Killers - Dying Breed
LANY - Cowboy in LA
This playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.
Community Watch
The trending and popular threads in our community this week include:
The most liked post in our forums last week was this one by cherrywaves in the “Accountability in Music” thread.
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Previous editions of Liner Notes can be found here.