Remove

Liner Notes (August 27th, 2022)

Posted by Jason Tate
Summer Light

This week’s newsletter has some thoughts on music released this week and random commentary on other entertainment I consumed over the past week. There’s also a playlist of ten songs I think are worth your time, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.

If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here.

A Few Things

  • I’m continuing to get used to the new computer and discovering new things I can do with it. This week I found this awesome Alfred Workflow that lets you run all your Shortcuts from Alfred. Using Alfred is ingrained into basically everything I do on a computer daily, from starting every morning by typing “Work” (launches all the apps I use, puts them in the right place on the screen) to just little things I’ve built to be more efficient in common tasks. Now, with Shortcut access, I can do things like type “sc volume,” and it’ll fire a Shortcut that sets the volume to exactly 50% – my preferred music listening volume. I often change the volume throughout the day if I’m in a meeting or have headphones in. Still, when I want to listen to music from the speakers, the perfect volume is 50%, and my compulsive side would often open up the Sound preference pane to ensure it was exactly set.
  • As anyone reading this probably knows, I’ve been very particular about using Last.fm over the past year or so. Wanting to be diligent in making sure I’m tracking everything I listen to. I was using Neptunes for a long while, but the new version keeps causing problems for me. It was dropping scrobbles on a regular basis. I’m now using the Scrobbles for Last.fm app, and it’s been more consistent. It still seems to miss a track if I pause for too long, but Neptunes was often missing entire albums or going days without it scrobbling anything. The developer was also nice enough to add a feature request for me. From the menu bar, you can now “love” the song you’re listening to with a keyboard shortcut. Often when I’m listening to music, I’ll want to “love” a track. Bartender has a keyboard shortcut feature for all menu bar apps. So, I daisy chained a bunch of stuff together in Keyboard Maestro. Caps Lock + L first hits the keyboard shortcut to show the Scrobbles menu, then hits the shortcut for Love Song, and then it fires off a notification confirming the track has been “loved” and displaying the artist and track title. A fun little trick.

Sponsor

Inertia Diverse have returned with a new video for “All The Things You’ll Never Know.”

This is the first in a series of new single releases leading up to a new full-length. The song is about looking back on past events in your life and realizing you’re still searching for the answers.

In Case You Missed It

Music Thoughts

  • A pretty fun week of music. First, we have the release of the new one from The Dangerous Summer. I have tried to avoid overplaying this album because my advance was in 128kbps and sounded like trash. Hearing it in good quality keeps a lot of my same thoughts from before. It’s a good album, but it’s not at the same level as the reached with Mother Nature. This one feels a little more “let’s record what we’ve got and move on,” whereas the previous one felt like the songs were worked a lot more, and the band was pushed maybe outside their comfort zone. Again, by no means a bad album, just not quite up to my extremely ridiculous expectations for this band. I look forward to spending even more time with it now.
  • My shocking discovery of the week is that I like the new Blackbear album. It’s very much in that new Travis Barker era of pop-punk realm, but he does it well, and there are some really good songs on there. Some of it gets a little too woe-is-me at times, even for me, but by and large, I came away surprised by how much I enjoyed the album and look forward to keeping it in rotation through the end of the summer.
  • Also now available: Butch Walker’s awesome new album. I recommend checking out Craig’s review and tossing this one on at your earliest convenience. Butch has been one of my favorite artists for years now, and he rarely disappoints. This one is right up there with his best IMO.
  • The best new song released this week is from L.S. Dunes. Very rarely do “super groups” end up meeting expectations but hooooolllly shit is this good. Like stopped me in my tracks good. I need to find out who is doing press for this album because I need this in my ear holes yesterday.
  • Gordi released a new EP last week, but I hadn’t listened to it all the way through when I wrote last week’s newsletter. It plays a little in that atmospheric and moody space that reminds me a bit of The Japanese House, and I expect it to sit in my late night listening habits as the weather continues to cool off.
  • Um, I’m not sure what to really say about the new album from No Trigger. Their previous releases are incredible fast melodic punk songs. This … is like bad NOFX? Juvenile and, honestly, difficult to get through.
  • The new Matt Maeson album feels like it’s better suited for autumn. I liked my first listen but also could tell I wasn’t quite in the mood for this style of music quite yet.
  • Action/Adventure’s pop-punk cover of Taylor Swift works shockingly well. I think this is one of the better “new” pop-punk bands out there right now and I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do on a full-length.
  • Story of the Year’s new single is in their more ballad-pop style. Sounds pretty good to my ears. I’ve heard from people that have the album that it’s up there with their best, so I’m cautiously optimistic.
  • I went on a pretty big mewithoutYou binge to start the week after the band played their final shows. They’re one of those bands that might take a little time to get into when you first hear them, but I contend they’re one of the all time greats. And once they click, they click hard. If you’ve never checked them out before, their last album is actually a great one to start with. And the goodbye tour and final shows really were a sight to behold and an incredible closing of the chapter for the band.
  • As we start moving toward the end of summer, I find myself squeezing a lot of time out of my favorite pop-punk releases. Holding on to that summery feeling for just a little longer.

The Stats: Over the past week, I listened to 29 different artists, 55 different albums, and 520 different tracks (602 scrobbles). My most listened to artist was Motion City Soundtrack with Commit This to Memory being my most played album. The seeming end of summer has me making sure I play all of my favorite summer albums a few more times. Here is my Top 9 from last week, and you can follow me on Apple Music and/or Last.fm.

Entertainment Thoughts

  • I had heard the buzz around Top Gun: Maverick, but I don’t think I was really prepared for just how perfectly they knocked this one out of the park. In an industry that mines nostalgia in often the most cynical ways, this felt like a jolt of pure entertainment. I absolutely loved it. It was reverent to the first movie without it feeling like it was knocking you over the head with “hey, remember this other thing you like?”
  • The first episode of Welcome to Wrexham hooked me. I’ve long had a man crush on both Ryan and Rob, so I’m probably predisposed to enjoy this, but I’m definitely in.
  • A League of Their Own still feels very much like a mass market network TV show to me. Predictable yet entirely enjoyable. I still think each episode could probably have 10-15 minutes cut from it, though.

Random and Personal Stuff

  • Not much for this section this week; it’s been a pretty laid-back and chill week, and I plan to finish up this newsletter and probably watch some baseball before picking a movie for the evening.

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.

  1. L.S. Dunes – Permanent Rebellion
  2. Action/Adventure – The Last Great American Dynasty
  3. The Dangerous Summer – Gold Star
  4. mewithoutYou – New Wine, New Skins
  5. Blackbear – Nothing Matters
  6. New Found Glory – Familiar Landscapes
  7. Brandston – Parallels
  8. Beddy Rays – On My Own
  9. Matt Maeson – Never Had to Leave
  10. Gordi – Burn all the Time Machines

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 Jason Tate in the “Travis Barker Tests Positive for COVID” thread.

Yikes. Can’t believe what a dumpster fire that thread became.

Previous editions of Liner Notes can be found here.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Sign up for a free weekly newsletter full of thoughts on music, entertainment, technology, and other cool stuff. Your email address stays completely private.