For as long as I can remember I’ve been doing some version of “first impression” blogs about music on the internet. It started back on AbsolutePunk.net in my blog as I’ve always loved being able to offer some thoughts on an album without the full pressure of an official “review.” My original idea was a more free flowing and less structured way to comment on music usually after having only heard an album one or two times. Today we’ve got things like our forums and social media to serve as a similar medium for putting together opinions on something without it needing to feel too official. I like that. It’s freeing.
One of the things I’ve been doing for supporters in our supporter forum is these first listen/first impression live blogs for certain albums. The basic idea is the same as always: I listen to an album and I do a little live blogging of my thoughts, impressions, and feelings as I listen to it. It started out as a fun little way to talk about music and once again helped me feel free from some of the pressures of “official” reviews on music. It’s been a lot of fun and it seems like everyone really enjoys reading them. Now, one of the downfalls of using the forum for this is that it’s not as easy to archive and save these pieces for posterity. And they’re behind the community package paywall and therefore unaccessible to patrons of the main website. Today, I’m fixing both of those problems.
First, I’m bringing a selection of my first impression threads to our review database. I’m starting with a few of the more popular ones, and I’ll be importing the rest within the next week or so. All the first impressions will be cataloged in our review section and they’ll be prominently marked as “first impressions” to differentiate them from regular reviews. I’ve also formatted the posts themselves a little differently to make it clear this is a running collection of thoughts, and not a traditional review in paragraph form.
To begin with these are remaining exclusive to supporters of the website, and for the first time they are available to patron level supporters as well. If you’re logged in to your supporter account, you’ll have instant access to all the first impression blogs. I think this extra exclusive content is a nice little perk as a thank you to everyone that continues to support this website. I hope you enjoy.
First Impressions (Batch One)
- Manchester Orchestra – A Black Mile to the Surface
- Jimmy Eat World – Integrity Blues
- Thrice – To Be Everywhere is to Be Nowhere
- Saosin – Along the Shadow
- PUP – The Dream is Over
Batch Two
- The Movielife – Cities in Search of a Heart
- All Time Low – Last Young Renegade
- New Found Glory – Makes Me Sick
- Fall Out Boy – Young and Menace (Single)
- Acceptance – Colliding by Design
- Butch Walker – Stay Gold