In the fall of 2016, Touché Amoré released their fourth album, Stage Four, on Epitaph Records to critical and fan acclaim. In January of 2017, the band released a video for the song “Benediction,” further detailing the loss lead singer Jeremy Bolm experienced when his mother passed away from cancer.
I had the chance to talk with the band before their recent show at The Fillmore in Philadelphia.
One year ago I retired AbsolutePunk.net and launched Chorus.fm into the world. I can’t believe it’s been a year. First, I want to thank everyone that’s supported the website for a full year and all of you that kept monthly payments on and re-signed up today with a new yearly subscription. Seriously, thank you. I had no idea if this entire endeavor was ever going to work, and all of the support has truly blown me away. I’ve loved getting to know so many of you over the past year and being able to share this experience with you. Again, I can’t tell you thank you enough.
One year in I figured is as good a time as ever to run down some of the numbers from the last 12 months:
Thomas Nassiff returns to the show to talk about live albums and when and where we think they work. We talk about our favorites, live bootlegs, and wonder why more bands don’t release more live material. We also talk about March Madness, having birthdays, the other Encore podcast, the other Chorus logo, home automation, books about tech companies, and all our usual stuff.
After watching the first six episodes a lot of critics were out on Netflix’s new series Iron Fist. The reviews haven’t been kind. While it’s hard to judge a whole show on just shy of half of its episodes, it’s important for a show to grab the audience from the start. Iron Fist doesn’t quite do that. While I made it through the whole thing, the start of the show was slow. The latter half is definitely better, but many people could find themselves giving up on the show before that happens.
Benchmarks will release their new album, Our Undivided Attention, on March 24th via SofaBurn Records. Today we’re premiering the full thing for your listening pleasure. Fans of The Menzingers or The Weakerthans won’t want to miss it. If you like the album, you can pre-order it through SofaBurn’s webstore.
Read More “Benchmarks – “Our Undivided Attention” (Album Premiere)”
On this week’s episode of Encore I am joined by special guest Ryan Gardner. Ryan joins the show to talk about growing up in this music scene and the bands that we first fell in love with. Then we talk a little about starting young with writing online, the lessons learned and why we think it’s important to just try, and how to maybe parlay that into some kind of career in the future. Freelancing, journalism, and how this alternative music scene has changed over the years rounds out the episode.
Thanks for listening!
Read More “Hiding Music From Our Parents (Encore Episode 145)”
Secret Space recently announced The Window Room Part 2: Lost in a Dream, a reimagining of their debut The Window Room with a few extra surprises thrown in. Today we’re excited to premiere one of those surprises: the first song the band ever recorded, a cover of Weezer’s “Butterfly.” If you like their take, be on the lookout for The Window Room Part 2 when it drops for free on their BandCamp on March 17th.
On this week’s episode of Encore I am joined by special guest Jesse Cannon. Jesse has credits on albums from The Menzingers, to Man Overboard, to The Cure. He has managed bands, produced bands, and has written multiple books about the music industry and navigating the current realities of being a musician and a songwriter in the internet era. He joins the show to talk about everything from authentic creativity when writing songs, to originality in music, to the biggest mistakes bands make when recording. We talk about sophomore slumps, how being emotionally aware leads to better music, and the entire idea behind bands writing albums for themselves versus for the fans. There’s a lot here, but it’s a fun one.
Rocky Votolato will be releasing a vinyl pressing of recordings from his recent series of living room shows. The album, Live at the Black Belt, will be out March 21st and pre-orders are now up. Today we’ve got a stream from the sessions of “Little Charger” — you can find that below.
Read More “Rocky Votolato – “Little Charger” (Live Song Premiere)”
Today we’ve got the premiere of the new EP from Out of Service. You may recognize the band name and/or album cover from one of our regular community members and his memorable avatar. The album was mixed and mastered by Nathan Hussey from All Get Out and it’ll be out this Friday. You can stream the whole thing below and pre-order it on Bandcamp.
Read More “Out of Service – ‘What We Bring With Us’ (Album Premiere)”
Today we’re happy to debut the new song, “Strange Companions,” from Bitter Pills. The band will be releasing their new EP, Night Season, on February 24th and pre-orders are now up. The song is the last track the band wrote for the EP and they think it shows where they want to take their music next, while giving a nod to their influences.
Read More “Bitter Pills – “Strange Companions” (Song Premiere)”
On this week’s episode of Encore I am once again joined by special guest Craig Manning. We talk about who our favorite bands are, what makes them our favorites, how that’s changed over the years and what it means to be a “favorite.” We also discuss what artists have the best chance of jumping into that list in the future. Then there’s some Grammy talk, and a look at Andrew McMahon and his career, all of his different projects, and his new album. There may be some album ranking.
Reservoir’s long-awaited debut full-length album, Mirage Sower, comes out March 17th. Today we’re excited to bring you the album’s first single “Smoke Signals.” This track is the album’s heavy, sprawling, closer and it can be streamed below. Like what you hear? Make sure you pre-order the album via Glory Kids Records.
This April will see the one year mark of when I started Chorus. By and large it’s been the most fulfilling stretch of work in my entire career. It’s been stressful. It’s been intense. But it’s also been extremely fun, challenging, and stimulating. As we come up on this anniversary I’ve been working on the first set of changes I want to make to the website to prepare ourselves for the future. There will be some design tweaks coming shortly, but the first thing I want to focus on is tightening up our supporter program.
Our supporter program has been a resounding success. When I started this project I made the argument that I believed the future of online publishing was going to depend on dedicated readers for websites to continue development and publication. Over the last year I’ve only become more convinced of this direction. And, I’ve been blown away by the first year of support from readers of this website. However, one of the main pieces of feedback I’ve heard is: I love this website, I love what you’re doing and want to help make sure it stays around, but I don’t really want to sign up for a forum membership account, is there any way I can become a patron without needing to join the forum community? My goal was to provide that functionality in the easiest form possible and allow readers to help support our continued existence for mere pennies per day.
If that’s all you need to hear, please take a look at our membership packages and sign up, if you want to be woo’d a little bit more, I’ve a longer pitch for you below.
Read More “We Need Your Help: We’re Expanding Our Supporter Packages”