On Friday, May 13th, JANK performed at Everybody Hits in Philadelphia for a special vinyl release show for their new album, Awkward Pop Songs. Today we’ve got the professionally shot video footage from this incredible show to share with you. You’ll be able to find that below. Enjoy!
Read More “JANK – ‘Awkward Pop Songs’ Vinyl Release Show (Video Premiere)”
This week’s episode of Encore looks at a lot of the music that’s come out in the past few weeks, specifically: The Hotelier, PUP, Thrice, and Saosin. We also look at the new music from Descendents, Sum 41, Yellowcard, and A Day to Remember. Plus, there’s a nice tangent all about Less Than Jake, because those guys are still somehow not given enough credit for how awesome they are. This is a fun one! We hope you like it.
It’s a famed report worth reading if this sort of stuff is in your wheel house.
You will walk into any given interview with what you think of as a cornucopia of arcane knowledge all but forcing its way out of your tear ducts to raise property values in a half mile radius. Much of the time, you will walk out of that interview wanting to give up and raise guinea pigs for a living. Every human knows things other humans do not, and most of us will eventually be in a position where another human is determining our future employment based on us knowing things very few humans know.
Curt Clifton, writing on his blog:
After two and a half years of decline, including a couple of emergency room visits, I finally sought treatment for my anxiety this spring.
I know many software developers who stuggle with anxiety. Perhaps software development attracts anxious people. We can mediate social interactions through the safety of a chat window. We spend our days in abstactions, so we can control the virtual environment—the code—in which we work. That sense of control can be comforting.
The obvious topic this week is a look at Brand New’s new single “I Am a Nightmare.” Do we like it? Where does it fit in the band’s discography? Has Thomas finally come around on Daisy? It’s Brand New, so of course we’re talking about it for a while. We also spend some time talking about the new Chorus logo, the (great) Riot Fest lineup, and how Bandcamp has figured out a sustainable business model. We end by talking a little about what defunct pop-punk band we think we’d most like to come back for the summer. As always, thank you for listening!
As a long sufferer of allergies I’ll be keeping an eye on this Molekule device:
After 20 years of research and development, a groundbreaking approach to clean air has arrived. Molekule breaks down harmful microscopic pollutants like allergens, mold, bacteria, viruses and even airborne chemicals.
Zealyn worked with producer Aaron Marsh (Copeland) on her upcoming EP, Limbic System, and today I’m excited to debut the track from it that also features Aaron on vocals. The song is called “Overwhelmed” and can be streamed below. Speaking about working on with Aaron on the song and tying their voices together, Zealyn says:
Having Aaron Marsh produce the EP was already incredible enough, but when the idea was brought up to have him featured on a song, I couldn’t believe it. His voice/songwriting is brilliant and so inspiring. It’s an honor to share a song with him! “Overwhelmed” directly sums up how the past six months have felt for me, and I believe everyone can relate to what I’m singing about. It’s about almost breaking under pressure and coming so close to giving up on everything you’ve worked towards.
Read More “Zealyn – “Overwhelmed” (feat. Aaron Marsh) (Song Premiere)”
Pablo S. Torre, writing for ESPN, on LeBron James and Dwyane Wade’s friendship:
It is the kind that, after 13 long years in this business, encourages them to think about the end. “We always say, ‘One day, we’re gonna stop dribbling this basketball,'” Wade says. “And yeah, while we’re playing against each other, we’re going to compete and we’re going to have fun. But life goes on way beyond this.”
“There is no loyalty in sports,” Union says. “It’s a business. Whatever loyalty exists is what you create outside the game. And when it’s all said and done, all you have is your relationships. A lot of retired guys have nobody. That’s a terrible, terrible feeling.”
When I drew the AbsolutePunk.net logo all those years ago, I never imagined how many places it would end up. I can’t tell you how many times we needed to shrink it down, or blow it up, or put it on a colored background, and I’d end up laughing at the little red splatters while having no real idea what to do with them. When I started building Chorus I had a color scheme I loved, but I was never able to settle on a logo that felt right. I tried a few different things before deciding to punt and launch with the word mark while using a blue and white “C.FM” placeholder. I wanted to make sure that this time I thought through everything. That if we had a logo, it was something I felt could stand the test of time and was a true representation of this new website.
I had a few goals in mind: I wanted something that represented the website, was easy to recognize, could be used in very large or very small sizes and still be distinguishable, could be used in virtually any color, or even monochrome if needed, and I was looking for something that had a familiar relationship with both our word mark and the Encore podcast logo. And more than anything, I was looking for that feeling of joy when I saw it — that feeling of, “yep, that’s it.” After working with the same designer that helped birth the Encore logo, I know that we found exactly what I was looking for.
I was feeling oddly nostalgic on the day Celebration Guns sent over this video to see about premiering it on the website, and something about the old home video footage worked so well with the music that it won me over almost instantly. The track, “The Me That Used to Be” comes from the band’s recently released EP of the same name. Frontman, Justin Weir, described the video premise:
The video features footage of me as a super hyperactive kid and while the lyrics have a general theme of reconnecting with youth and the associated beliefs and ideals that came with it, the video features the guys in the band reconnecting with the spirit of youth at an arcade, minigolf, and laser tag. Kind of a more personal look at Celebration Guns that hopefully brings about a nostalgic feeling overall.
Read More “Celebration Guns – “The Me That Used To Be” (Video Premiere)”
Cassino will be releasing their new EP, Bottlenecker, on May 27th and today I’m excited to premiere the new song “Rose of Lee” from it. You’ll find that below and can pre-order the album on iTunes. Nick, talking about the song said:
This song was the first one written after Kingprince. We had some of the same guys who played on Kingprince jam on this record. They tour with bigger pop-country acts, so it’s entertaining to let them loose and see what they come up with. Their understanding of the mathematics of music is interesting to me because they hear the songs sometimes at a different angle. We recorded this record in my friend’s log cabin north of Nashville in the snake infested woods of Smiley Hollow. It had two creeks and was fairly quiet most of the time. Ed said there was a wolf like creature haunting the woods around the house, and the dogs wouldn’t go outside. I came to the conclusion it was maybe some version of Ed’s soul haunting himself. Or a malamute.
Lauren Dragan, writing for The Wirecutter:
The compensated-review process is simple: Businesses paid to create dummy accounts purchase products from Amazon and write four- and five-star reviews. Buying the product makes it tougher for Amazon to police the reviews, because the reviews are in fact based on verified purchases. The dummy accounts buy and review all sorts of things, and some of the more savvy pay-for-review sites even have their faux reviewers pepper in a few negative reviews of products made and sold by brands that aren’t clients to create a sense of “authenticity.”
This week’s episode of Encore looks at “advance music culture” and what the expectations are for music bloggers that get sent music in advance. Has the music press become too “braggy”? Does talking about an album too much ruin the album for fans by building up expectations too high? What about bands that don’t want anyone to “hype” up their albums? Alongside the main topic we talk about Captan America: Civil War, Radiohead, Modern Baseball, and answer a few listener questions as well. You’ll find all the download and subscription information below, and, as always — thanks for listening.
This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on May 12th, 2016. First impressions are meant to be quick, fun, initial impressions on an album or release as I listen to it for the first time. It’s a running commentary written while listening to an album — not a review. More like a diary of thoughts. This post has been lightly edited for structure and flow.
Hahah, ok, yeah, maybe not what people would expect me to do a first listen for, but the album showed up, and after I did a listen of The Living End’s Shift while queuing up news for tomorrow morning, I threw this on kind of as an after thought for fun, not really expecting much.
Um.
I like it. Like, it’s kinda really fun and good pop-rock music. Like, it’s kinda the best album the band’s written since Young and the Hopeless. Like, maybe it’s the two beers, but whatever, I’m gonna do another listen and write some thoughts about this one. News is queued up, to-do list for the day is done, and it’s too late to do any actual “work” for the rest of the evening.