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Liner Notes (February 19th, 2023)

Posted by Jason Tate

This week’s newsletter discovers some fun acoustic emo covers, looks at other music I enjoyed this week, and teaches me lessons I, apparently, need to keep learning about movie selection. As always, there’s a playlist of ten songs I enjoyed, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.

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A Few Things

  • We posted up our Most Anticipated of 2023 list this week. I wrote about Blink-182 (who are almost done with their new album), Jimmy Eat World, Gaslight Anthem, and Fall Out Boy. Just reading those names back again fills me with intense anticipation.
  • The other AP posted up an “oral history” of AbsolutePunk.net. I thought the feature came out well, and it was fun to read comments from some long-time friends and people I’ve worked with now for over two decades.
  • I thought this article on Stratechery and this video from Tom Scott, both looking at AI differently, were exciting and worth your time.

In Case You Missed It

Music Thoughts

  • I’ve started trying to listen to most of, if not the entire, playlist that Apple creates “for me” each Friday. Not only to make sure I don’t miss anything but because I’ve started seeing more artists on it I’ve never checked out before and, well, I like discovering new music. This week saw the new single from Taylor Acorn show up on it, and I was impressed. So, I checked out her profile and saw a bunch of different emo/pop-punk and emo-adjacent covers on the page. I immediately checked out the acoustic cover of Blink-182’s “First Date” and loved it. But she’s also got an EP with covers of Paramore and My Chemical Romance on it, and a really awesome Panic! at the Disco rendition as well. I ended up tossing her something like 36 songs (almost all singles, with a couple of EPs) on shuffle and letting it play through multiple times over the weekend. Honestly, I don’t think she’s released a bad song. Good find Apple Music, good find.
  • Of the albums released this week that I checked out, I think I liked Caroline Polachek’s the most. A few places reminded me of early Imogen Heap.
  • The rest of the week had me enjoying the latest from Thousand Below, which I had given up on after not liking their past few releases, but I saw someone mention them and figured I should give them another shot. That latest walks the melodic hardcore space well and became an excellent gym album for the week.
  • I also continued on a big Anberlin binge (Hannah got me a hoodie for Valentine’s day which inspired a catalog dive) and had to break out a few Yellowcard records to celebrate their touring return (a tour that I’m thrilled to see selling well so far).
  • I also finally checked out Zach Bryan’s EP, which I liked, and now I can finally dive into his live album. My word is there a lot of material to get through.

The Stats: Over the past week, I listened to 44 different artists, 92 different albums, and 574 different tracks (652 scrobbles). My most played artist was Anberlin, with Cities being my most played album. Here is my Top 9 from last week, and you can follow me on Apple Music and/or Last.fm.

Entertainment Thoughts

  • Sharper was the shape of a movie I’ve liked almost my entire life; the “con” movie with a few twists and turns. It worked more than it didn’t, but I was never fully invested, and it played out with a too-obvious final act. Enjoyable enough.
  • We’ve had a bunch of movies sitting on Plex for a few years now that we know we want to watch, but we feel like we need to be in the right mood or mindset to actually sit down with them. A lot of Friday evenings, after a long week of work, we’re not feeling the long epic film. However, last week we finally checked Portrait of a Lady on Fire off the list, and not surprisingly, it was as incredible as people had said it was. A lesson I have to keep learning over and over again: sometimes it’s worth it to just watch the (probably) really good movie sitting there instead of the new “well, maybe it’ll be fun?” movie that just came out.
  • The TV show we’re now making our way through had been in our queue for a while as well, The Chestnut Man. When the serial killer/murder mystery show is done well, I’m almost always a fan. We’ve got a few episodes left, and this one has been pretty good.
  • We’re also re-watching one of the most underrated 30-minute sitcoms in recent years, Life in Pieces, as our before-bed show.

Random and Personal Stuff

  • A friend’s birthday party on Friday night had an “80’s theme,” and that included a whole boatload of Taco Bell. I am unsure my body has completely recovered from that beating.

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. Taylor Acorn – First Date
  2. Dave Hause – Damn Personal
  3. Dog Hotel – Left Off
  4. Zach Bryan – Dawns
  5. Thousand Below – Hell Finds You Everywhere
  6. Caroline Polachek – Bunny is a Rider
  7. Paramore – Figure 8
  8. Yellowcard – Back Home (Acoustic)
  9. The Gaslight Anthem – Mulholland Drive
  10. TaylorAcorn – I Think I’m in Love

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 williamryankey in the “Yellowcard” thread

That’s cool.

Previous editions of Liner Notes can be found here.

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