Alkaline Trio Talk With Rolling Stone

Alkaline Trio

Alkaline Trio talked with Rolling Stone about their upcoming album:

Now, there’s a bit of a rebirth of the band. Again, we don’t really know what’s going to happen — we’re just really excited about these songs. I think there’s a sort of freedom to not making a record in five years and coming back to it and just writing in the studio. There was no talk of a single. There was no “What song are we going to work on to push on the radio?” That’s not something we really focus on ever, but it is something that gets brought up by the producer, or the record label. People want to sell records and that’s 100 percent understandable. But this time, it just didn’t come up. We just made a record.

Apple Music Launches “Friends Mix”

Apple Music has launched a new “Friends Mix” that will give you a list of 25 songs each week based on the listening habits of people you follow on the service. You can find this in the “For You” section of Apple Music. My “Friends Mix” looks basically exactly like you’d expect.

If you want my spins showing up in your mix, feel free to follow me here. It’s been a lot of punk music lately.

Ben Gibbard Ranks Death Cab for Cutie Albums

Death Cab for Cutie

Ben Gibbard sat down with Noisey to rank Death Cab for Cutie albums:

In writing this album, we had this big blowout with Chris in October of 2001 and we got home from that tour and realized we needed a break. We needed to take time and do some other stuff, and we did. I had a lot of time to write. I know for a fact I will never have a year again like 2003. The Postal Service record came out, Transatlanticism came out. These two records will be on my tombstone, and I’m totally fine with that. I’ve never had a more creatively inspired year, and the proof is in the pudding.

Rules Won’t Save Twitter. Values Will.

Twitter

Kara Swisher, writing for The New York Times:

But by that measure, the rest of us plebes, including Mr. Jones, should probably get no protection if we err, no matter how much we rant that tweeting is a right under the First Amendment. It’s not, because Twitter is not the government and it can decide what and what not to host on its service. In any case, if you get kicked off Twitter, you can always unload your twisted mind on your very own website. And it cannot be said too many times that freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from consequence.

All this is not to say that fixing Twitter will be easy; in fact, I think at this point it is nearly impossible. Add to that the fact that this is a global issue, making it hard to have any consistent rules that address the complexity of the world and, really, its deep and abiding ugliness.

It’s time for Jack to leave as CEO. He failed at the most important tests for his company, time, and time again.