Liner Notes (September 4th, 2020)
First impressions of the new Acceptance album, more impressions of the new Slick Shoes album, and all sorts of heaping praise for Ted Lasso. All that, and more, in this week’s newsletter. Plus, as always, a playlist of ten songs I enjoyed this week. This week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
Five Things
This week’s article was all about heading back to 2000. It was a simpler time. I was 17 and a junior in high school. It’s the year of The Ever Passing Moment, The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show, and New Found Glory’s self-titled album showing me the shape of pop-punk to come.
I also put together a feature this week that includes a bunch of screenshots I’ve been able to compile of all the AbsolutePunk versions from about 1999 through 2016. I wanted to have a place to keep this part of my history, and it’s a real trip to scroll back through the years. I will say, every time I post something like this, and I see social media comments saying something like “bring it back!” or “it was better!” I get this ping of annoyance. If I “brought back” AbsolutePunk it would look and act, exactly like Chorus does right now, because that’s the kind of website I want to run.
On that note, I’ve pretty much completed my project of bringing back the reviews and interviews I could find from the old days. It’s a pretty extensive collection. I have a few stragglers, and some reviewers have been sending me stuff they’ve discovered from their collections as well. My next step is to bring back some ‘historical’ news stories, but I need to find the time when I can do this and be able to edit the comment thread dates. I don’t want the news to appear as “new” for a bunch of these. I also need to remember to disable the automatic Twitter posting; a few old stories went out to Twitter by accident. Oops.
I ripped Stand Atlantic’s Juice WRLD cover if anyone wants it for their collection.
In Case You Missed It
Music Thoughts
I keep relearning the same lessons again and again. I’ve written before about how I don’t like hearing too much of an album before hearing the entire thing in full because it throws off that cohesive listening experience. Well, I didn’t listen to past me and played the latest Acceptance EP many times before hearing the full album, Wild, Free, and it took me most of the week for it to not feel weird. Having songs I’d already heard placed at the start of the album made me want to get to the new stuff faster, and then having the other songs mixed in with the other six kept throwing me off completely. This is a completely asinine problem to have, but it made the first two or three spins of the album feel off to me. It was hard to sink into the music and the album as a whole because I’m an idiot who overplayed the EP. After a while, I got used to the sequencing and became more familiar with the new music and let it work with the stuff I’d already heard. (For their part, they picked four songs for the EP that are very indicative of the kind of music found on the full length.) If Phantoms was a youthful anthem, and I mean this with praise, Wild, Free, is the grown-up with kids and a mortgage. It feels exactly, almost eerily, like what someone my age would put on and listen to. It’s a big, stadium rock, sounding album that is not unlike the latest album from The Killers. Big choruses, mostly in the mid-tempo, with, and again, I say this with praise, a huge “put this on while driving to get groceries for the family” vibe. The early highlight for me is “Bend the Light” — a massive ballad right in the album’s heart. I’m also really drawn to “June 1985,” and the line in the chorus that reads something like, “here’s to the friends that we left better / here’s to the now or the never / here’s where you and I say goodbye.” The lyrics on the album are often in this somber, sometimes wistful, melancholy of broken romance. Not in the youthful tales of broken harts and teenage angst but of the kind of emotional breakage that comes with age. Because my listens to this album were timed with watching Ted Lasso on TV each night (see below), I found myself thinking there are so many themes and portions of this album that would actively work to soundtrack scenes in that show. I’ve been drawn to the half of the album I hadn’t heard before, which is to be expected, and I hope over the next few weeks to find myself able to experience the album as a whole more than in these two halves. But, on the top line, it’s the kind of record that feels so very much me and of my lot in life. I don’t have kids, but if I did, it’s the kind of record I’d probably be putting on Sunday morning while I made pancakes and eggs before mowing the lawn. The type of record my hypothetical teenagers would mock in the same way I scoffed at the U2 or Bruce Springsteen albums in my early youth. This album is giving me an existential crisis. But enough about my brain melting as I reconcile the passing of years. If you haven’t listened to the first five songs yet, my recommendation is to wait to hear the whole thing. Let yourself be swept up in the melody and full experience. And let this album be the next I see in one of Jason Snell’s screenshots.
I shared some early first impressions on Slick Shoes’ new album last week, but now that I’ve had an entire week with this record, I have a few more thoughts. I think it’s their best record, and I cannot believe how many times I’ve listened to it this week (eight times). Fast-paced pop-punk with guitar riffs galore. A sound that I thought was in my rearview mirror, a sound I didn’t think would appeal to me at the ripe old age of 37. I was wrong. It’s so good. The melodies, the choruses, the drumming. The stretch from “Held by Hope” through “2008” is one of my favorite runs of music I’ve heard this year; a burning musical ball of energy. The album drops on September 25th and comes highly recommended.
Fickle Friends’ new single continues their trend of being remarkably consistent.
The Dangerous Summer is mixing it up with a little piano ballad for their latest. I’m into it. I think it would fit great in the middle of an album. Between these previous two songs and their last fantastic full-length, it’s an excellent time to be a TDS fan.
Phoebe Bridgers’s Red Rocks performance was incredible. I definitely recommend finding an hour to grab a couple of drinks and play this on the big screen.
I continue to spin the new Stand Atlantic and Yours Truly albums at least once a week. These two records have been the most consistent pop-punk listening I’ve done in years.
If you like The Gaslight Anthem, Against Me!, and The Menzingers, you should be checking out Cold Years’ new album Paradise today. Trust me.
Next up, I plan to spin the new record from Barely Civil.
Entertainment Thoughts
We started Ted Lasso this week, and I have nothing but massive praise to heap upon this show. It’s a shot of optimism and joy that made me feel something other than dread about the world every second it was on. It’d like to bottle that feeling and drink it. We’ve already watched all the available episodes, and I cannot wait to watch the new one tonight. I didn’t think this show would work, and yet it’s become exactly what I needed right now—highly recommended.
We finished Teenage Bounty Hunters, which also gets two thumbs up. I liked the twist ending, and Netflix better give this a second season or we riot.
Next up, we’re giving Control Z a shot. We’ve watched two so far, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m cautiously interested.
We finished up season, sorry, “series,” nine of Doctor Who. My feelings haven’t changed on this one. (Least favorite Doctor, least favorite companion.) So, I’m excited about a new companion in the next batch.
Last weekend, we watched Feel the Beat on Netflix, and it was basically exactly what it looks like. Netflix is churning out these feel-good Disney-like films with more consistency now. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
I did not, however, enjoy Peninsula. I was a massive fan of the first Train to Busan film and was highly anticipating this one. It sucked. What an utterly boring zombie movie.
Needing a zombie fix after that bust of a movie, I started reading World War Z this week. I think I have a chapter left. How it’s broken up into this oral history format makes it easy to pop in and read a little at a time, but without a consistent cast of characters throughout, I’ve found myself zoning out a little as well.
Random and Personal Stuff
Operation: Be Healthier During a Pandemic continues to churn along. I’m feeling much, much better about myself over the past couple of weeks, and feel on the right path again.
I don’t have much else to share this week. I plan to watch some baseball and get offline for a bit after I finish up here. All the news is giving me that little itchy feeling in the back of my head that only makes me angrier.
Make sure you’re registered to vote. Now’s the time to check and make sure everything is all good, and you have a plan for November. (Unless you’re planning to vote for the fascist racist sexist narcissistic man child.)
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 - Funeral Home
Cold Years - Northern Blues
PVRIS - Good to Be Alive
Hot Milk - Candy Coated Lie$
Dagny - It’s Only a Heartbreak
Fickle Friends - What a Time
Bad Religion - Faith Alone 2020
Wander - Your Love
The Dangerous Summer - Come Down
Dashboard Confessional - Remember to Breathe
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 mad in the “Accountability in Music” thread.
I hope everyone has a great weekend. Go watch Ted Lasso.
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Previous editions of Liner Notes can be found here.