Liner Notes (January 14th, 2023)

The World

I still don’t have my head wrapped around it being 2023, but I’m here with another edition of the newsletter anyway. There’s also a playlist of ten songs worth your time, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.

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A Few Things

  • I enjoyed this oral history of the use of the Papyrus font on Avatar and the SNL sketch it inspired.
  • I shared this tip on Mastodon for having a “Forgotten Albums” view in Marvis that surfaces albums you haven’t listened to in a while. Whenever I’m not sure what I want to listen to, I scroll through this to see some things I haven’t thought about for a bit. I also have the “last played” metadata viewable around the app, so I can see, “oh, it’s been seven months since I last heard that album; I should add that to my queue.” I love this app so much.
  • If you have Sonos speakers, I can highly recommend the app Soro. It lets you integrate Sonos with Shortcuts, and I created a simple little menu to control the volume.

In Case You Missed It

Music Thoughts

  • It seems we’re slowly starting the new year with new music. This week saw the release of a new album from The Subways that I’ve enjoyed a couple of plays through so far. It kind of reminds me a little of earlier Arctic Monkeys.
  • The rest of the week had me listening to a lot of The Academy Is…, Yellowcard, and remembering how incredible that last Thursday album is.
  • The new Paramore single seems to be polarizing, but I like it. I think it’ll work even better in the context of the album. I’ve listened to each of the songs once or twice and am dying to hear this thing in full.
  • And we have a new Fall Out Boy single coming next week. I’m sure that one won’t be polarizing at all. Well, I bet that it’s less polarizing than “Young and Menace,” at the very least.

The Stats: Over the past week, I listened to 44 different artists, 59 different albums, and 514 different tracks (538 scrobbles). Yellowcard was my most listened-to artist of the week, and The Subways’ new album was my most played. Here is my Top 9 from last week, and you can follow me on Apple Music and/or Last.fm.

Entertainment Thoughts

  • I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that I’ll be turning 40 in a few months. In preparation, it felt fitting to watch This is 40 last night. It’s an hour too long, and Paul Rudd’s character runs the worst record label of all time.
  • We finished the second season of White Lotus. Hmm, please remind me never to go on vacation with any friends.

Random and Personal Stuff

  • It’s gloomy and rainy here in Portland today. So, at the moment we’re just being lazy on the couch by the fire. No complaints.

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. The Subways – Love Waiting on You
  2. The Academy Is … – Neighbors
  3. Charli Adams – Remember Cloverland
  4. No Motiv – Solemn
  5. Thursday – A Gun in the First Act
  6. Joshua Radin – Broken
  7. Minus the Bear – The Fix
  8. Holy Fawn – Lift Your Head
  9. Circa Waves – Never Going Under
  10. Fun. – Walking the Dog

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 David87 in the “Absurdist Twitter” thread.

Previous editions of Liner Notes can be found here.

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