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Liner Notes (April 5th, 2019)

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Melody Bot, Apr 5, 2019.

  1. Melody Bot

    Your friendly little forum bot. Staff Member

    This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

    Another week is in the books.

    This website turned three years old on Monday and as a thank you to everyone I’ve made this edition of my weekly newsletter free. You’ll find some thoughts on music I listened to this week, my weekly media diet roundup, and some news on the new Chorus.fm shop that will be launching early next week. There’s also a playlist full of ten songs I loved this week. The supporter Q&A post can be found here.

    Three Things

    • This week marks the third anniversary of Chorus. I wrote a little bit about the past year and shared some fun stats on Monday. A huge thank you to everyone for helps support this website and spend their days talking in the forums with me.
    • As frequent visitors of the Supporter Q&A thread know, I’ve been spending my week working on putting together a Chorus.fm merch store. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time, and I finally made it a priority. I will be making the official announcement on Monday and officially sharing the link with everyone, but supporters can get early access here. There’s a whole bunch of different designs, colors, types of merch, and yes, I am bringing the classic AP.net heart logo back for a few designs as well. Here’s a sneak peek of a few of my favorites:

    [​IMG]

    • I hope all my friends and family appreciate that this is all they will be getting as gifts for the next few years.
    • I ripped the live performance of “Shallow” by Better Oblivion Community Center if anyone wants it, and here’s the Ruston Kelly cover of Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” as well.
    In Case You Missed It

    Music Thoughts

    • I spent most of the week getting caught up on podcasts and didn’t end up listening to much music during the day. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to listen to and since there were some day baseball games on, I ended up just listening to those instead.
    • I did, however, give the new Simple Creatures EP a couple more spins and I’m entirely in the “this is good” camp now. I knew I liked it on first listen, but after a week with it, I’m fully in on this sound and band. I want more. That riff on “Adrenaline” is fantastic.
    • I followed through with my goal from last week and broke out some Less Than Jake this week. Anthem is such a perfect summer album, hell, their whole discography screams “play me with the windows down.” I think See The Light is an underrated gem in their catalog.
    • I like this new song from Chief State. I think this acoustic sound should be something they explore more of; I like it better than their pop-punk stuff.
    • The new album from PUP is out today and it seems to be getting a good response from everyone. I need the weather to get just a tad warmer before I put this back in the rotation.
    • I enjoy the back half of this Hellogoodbye “Nude Mixes” release. I’m always curious in seeing artists play around with different versions of songs and trying different things, and I think it works well for quite a few of these.
    • I’m still enjoying The Maine’s new one, and that Bad Religion album is scratching the punk itch.
    Entertainment Thoughts

    • I continued my run of baseball movies by giving Bull Durham a watch last Friday while Hannah was playing a concert. I still can’t get over Tim Robbins’s throwing motion, but the movie still worked alright. I didn’t like my re-watch of this nearly as much as I did The Natural, a lot of it didn’t age very well.
    • This was a week of not great movies but not knowing what else to watch and saying, fuck it, let’s try that. So, that means we spent a night watching the new Robin Hood. It’s preposterous. The costumes and clothing are laugh out loud funny through the entire thing, and at this point, Ben Mendelsohn has been playing the same villain like thirty times, and yet we somehow made it through the whole movie. I don’t understand why this was made, and I will never get over all the stylish outfits everyone was wearing during the Crusades.
    • I’ve seen way worse movies that have way better Rotten Tomato scores than Mortal Engines. It wasn’t very good, but it’s … fine, and probably not deserving of the drubbing it took. That said, I like the idea of this movie more than I liked the film itself, so maybe someday I’ll give the books a shot.
    • The best movie we watched this week was Another Earth. It was well done, and I like movies that take a science fiction premise and use it in the background for a more human story. I put this on my list to watch after enjoying the actress, Brit Marling, in The OA, and I can see threads of that series in this movie as well. Now I want to watch the second season of that show.
    • After finishing the novel 11.22.63, I recommended it to Hannah, and she cranked through the audiobook over the past week while driving to work. She also really liked it and wanted to watch the TV show next. It’s been pretty good so far, and it’s been interesting to see what they’ve changed in the show versus the book. I’m not sure I like all the changes, but they make some sense for trying to condense such a long and sweeping, book into television episodes. We’re halfway through and have four more episodes to go.
    • I tossed on a few episodes of Parks and Recreation earlier this week, and that show is like a warm blanket.
    • The final season of You’re the Worst ended this week and we’re about three episodes behind. We hope to finish that this weekend and I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle it. This season has been fantastic, and this show will go down as one of my favorites when it’s all said and done — if they stick the landing like I think they will.
    • I finished reading Vortex, and then figured I had already read two of these books, I might as well read the third. So, I read Catalyst as well. The series was a very fast read, and overall I enjoyed it and liked the characters. They weren’t great books, but I enjoyed being able to fly through them and get lost in the world for a little bit, even if I had some massive problems with the “rules” of how that world was structured. I started reading Meddling Kids a couple of nights ago and am only about 20% of the way through it. The premise of the book is cool (imagine if the Scooby Doo gang all grew up and realized one of the cases they ‘solved’ as kids were actually real), but I’m unsure how I feel about the tone of the novel so far. It walks between being creepy and being slapstick, which, I get is the point, but it’s a little jarring at times. I’m drawn in already though, so we’ll see how I feel as it progresses. Books like The Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, Harriet the Spy, and stuff like that were some of the first books I remember reading obsessively as a kid, so this is definitely in my wheelhouse.
    Random and Personal Stuff

    • The college basketball season ended for me in disappointing fashion. I knew this Duke team was flawed (a bad three and free throw shooting team is always going to struggle in March), but I had hoped they’d find a way to win on pure talent anyway. I’ll remember this year for a very long time and am excited to see where Zion goes next year and what kind of NBA career he will have. That man is a rare talent, and I think he’s going to be something special. I can’t say I care that much for the Final Four now, but I hope anyone except Michigan State wins.
    • This past year has been just brutal with injuries and my favorite sports teams. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see injuries pile up immediately during the baseball season as well. It’s still a bummer though. That said, my favorite young player in the majors, Gleyber Torres, had a great four-for-four day with two home runs yesterday and that was awesome to see. I missed baseball.
    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. Less Than Jake – The Ghosts of Me and You
    2. Simple Creatures – Adrenaline
    3. The Sonder Bombs – Title
    4. A Wilhelm Scream – The Soft Sell
    5. Ellie Fanning – Don’t Kill My Vibe
    6. Hellogoodbye – I’ll Keep Following You
    7. New Found Glory – This is Me
    8. Laura Stevenson – Hum
    9. Ben Platt – Hurt Me Once
    10. Simon & Garfunkel – Scarborough Fair

    The playlists are also available on Spotify and Apple Music.

    I hope everyone has a great weekend. I’m going to head to the gym for a bit before hanging out with Hannah and my sister tonight.

    Previous editions of this roundup can be found here.

     
  2. tyramail

    Trusted Supporter

    March Madness ended very bad for my bracket. Mariners off to a great start though!
     
    Jason Tate likes this.
  3. Former Planets

    Aaaachem!

    I love listening to Anthem and B is for B-Sides together on shuffle. Awesome collection of tunes. Borders & Boundaries is probably my favorite though.
     
    JRGComedy likes this.
  4. Serh

    Prestigious Prestigious

    Believe me, YTW DOES nail the ending
     
  5. Stoked for the Chorus and AP merch!
     
    Kingjohn_654 and Jason Tate like this.