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Liner Notes (June 5th, 2021)

Posted by Jason Tate
Giraffe

This week’s newsletter has thoughts on music released this week, some of the entertainment I consumed, and random thoughts on time tracking, flipping through Dan Ozzi’s new book Sellout, and a playlist of ten songs I loved. This week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.

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A Few Things

  • Early this year, I started playing around more with time tracking. I dipped my toe in, just wanting to get a taste of where I was spending my time each week. I’ve been using the great iOS app, Timery, and this week it came to the Mac; MacStories has an excellent rundown of the features. I like having quick widgets set up to trigger timers for the four most common things I track. I played around with the Mac version some this morning to get it set up in Notification Center how I like it, and I’m a fan so far. Only nitpick I have is that I wish I could run it in the menu bar instead of having a Dock icon; hopefully, something like that will come to an update in the future. (Oh, and for the record, as I expected: I spend way too much time in meetings each week.)
  • Dan Ozzi sent me an advance copy of his new book, Sellout, to check out. It comes out in October and runs through the punk and emo scene of the late 90s to early 00s and all of the major label-feeding frenzy around many bands. I’ve only just started to flip through it and plan to dive in deeper as soon as I finish Dune, but at first glance, this looks not only right up my alley but in the wheelhouse of anyone reading this newsletter. I read some of the Blink-182 chapter because I wanted to see how in-depth it was going to get, and there’s a whole lot of great nuggets in there. I’ll write more after I am able to sit down with it.
  • It’s Hannah’s birthday tomorrow, so today we’re heading to the zoo with some friends and their three-year-old to spend some time outside. Tomorrow we’ll be hanging out with her parents some, and we don’t have too much planned. It’s nice to do something for a birthday, and I’m hoping by next year everything will feel even more like normal. Last weekend we did a BBQ with some fully vaccinated friends, and it was one of the most normal feeling things we’ve done in almost 18 months. It felt incredible.

Sponsor

This week’s sponsor is Healthy Scratch, a punk band from New York who released their debut single “Born to Run (from Nothing)” on all streaming platforms. They’d love to hear what you think.

RIYL: Sum 41, Strike Anywhere, A Wilhelm Scream.

Make sure you follow the band on Spotify.

In Case You Missed It

Music Thoughts

  • This week sees the release of the new Joy Oladokun album. If you haven’t checked her stuff out yet, it comes highly recommended. It’s a songwriting tour de force. Personal, emotional, and I think she takes it all to the next level here; firing on all cylinders.
  • I am extremely here for Patrick Stump’s Spider-Man cartoon theme song. (Extreme Chandler Bing Voice) “Could this be more in my wheelhouse?”
  • Hmm. So, John Mayer announced a new album and a new single. The album has all of the previous three songs he’s released over the past few months, which, I guess I expected, and I’m fine with since I barely listened to them. The new song is … alright I guess. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s missing something. It feels extremely generic and lacking something to elevate it. The album cover and other songs have me excited to hear more, and, as far as I’m concerned: It really can’t be worse than his last album, right?
  • The new Wolf Alice album rules. It’s diverse, sonically engaging, and very easy to get lost in. I’ve been listening to it all morning and see this being slated into my daily listening for the next few weeks, at least.
  • If we get another wave of ska in my lifetime, let it be led by We Are the Union. Their extremely fun new album is out now.
  • Oh, and the new Rise Against came out this week as well. From what I can see, it seems to be pretty well received from fans. It continues to grow on me, and I like it a whole lot more than their last album. I still really want to see the band explode in a few songs and up the aggression, but it’s still good. I have a few very distinct “car” albums that I remember in my lifetime, and Siren Song of the Counter Culture may be near the top of my list. That album sounded so fucking good blasting from a car stereo while driving down the freeway with the windows down. That would have to be up there as an answer to, “Hey Siri, play me something that reminds me of college.”

Entertainment Thoughts

  • Hannah picked the movie last night, cause birthday weekend, and she went with Donnie Darko because she hadn’t seen it in years. This was one of my favorite movies back in the day, but I also hadn’t seen it in quite a long time. It holds up pretty well for what it is. It’s not as smart or clever as I thought it was in 2001, but it definitely remains infinitely quotable.
  • The second half of Cruella was definitely better than the first. Still not a great movie, but it was enjoyable enough, and I always enjoy Emma Stone.
  • We started Girls5Ever, and the first episode was funny enough that we’ll try a few more. It seems like a fun little late-night show. Drew liked it. So, if it ends up being bad, I get to make fun of him. Feels like a win/win to me. We also finished up the new Mighty Ducks, which is like taking all the Disney/kids/sports movies tropes and throwing them in a blender. But, you know, I enjoyed it for what it was. I still can’t really get over Gordon Bombay morphing into Jed Bartlett, but, that’s on my aging ass to cope with.
  • Mare of Easttown is boring me. We have one episode left, and I’m pretty certain I already know exactly what will happen and have for multiple episodes now. The writing hasn’t done anything for me. I find it extremely cliché, and I get that I’ve watched almost all these kinds of shows and read so many books in this genre, but I feel like I shouldn’t be able to guess your “twist” ending because of a weirdly edited shot in an early episode. You hung on a character, in a weird moment, just a tad too long. And, I’m pretty sure that was enough to give it away. Oh well, I’ve watched worse.
  • I think we’re going to watch Plan B tonight, and it’s getting good buzz, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m not sure what our next TV show will be, though.

Random and Personal Stuff

  • Not much else to write about this week. Going to go run a few errands and try and fit in a workout before we head to the zoo. I hope everyone has a good weekend.

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. Joy Oladokun – Mighty Die Young
  2. Wolf Alice – Lipstick on the Glass
  3. We Are the Union – Broken Brain
  4. Matt Maeson – Nelsonwood Lane
  5. Bad Suns – Heaven Is a Place in My Head
  6. All Time Low – Too Much
  7. Verite – By Now
  8. Dua Lipa – Can They Hear Us?
  9. Parting – After the Fact
  10. Olivia Rodrigo – Brutal

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 dylan in the “Accountability in Music” thread.

Previous editions of Liner Notes can be found here.

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