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Liner Notes (November 30th, 2024)

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Melody Bot, Nov 30, 2024 at 7:02 PM.

  1. Melody Bot Nov 30, 2024 at 7:02 PM
    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.

    I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, or if you’re not in the States, just a good Thursday and start to your weekend.

    If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here.

    A Few Things

    • I tried to keep track of the various Black Friday/Holiday sales I saw over the past week, and the community added some others to the replies. It’s always worth taking a look at as the Christmas gifting season begins. November is now over, and the year is almost over, and time has continued flying by at a record pace. We spent most of the day today putting up the Christmas tree and decorating a little bit for December. Sitting here now by the fire with the Christmas lights behind me is quite nice.
    • I say this with no hyperbole: Overcast is probably the most used app on my phone since its launch if you don’t count Messages and Safari. I’ve been writing about it since its debut and listened to thousands of hours of podcasts on it. I gladly pay for the premium version, and I subscribe to (and pay for) the creator’s podcast, ATP.fm, and have listened to every single episode. I love Overcast. And yet, when I saw a message saying that the app’s price was going to increase with the next payment, I couldn’t help but cringe a little. The latest app redesign has fundamentally broken the app for me in some significant ways. I can no longer play any podcasts on my portable speaker. AirPlay says it’s connected, but no sound comes out. I used to listen to many podcasts while showering and getting ready, but this no longer works. The app crashes on me every few days. Usually losing my place in whatever podcast I was listening to. And this bug where I hit back on a podcast screen and have to hit it multiple times (sometimes between 5-8) to go back to the podcast list view makes me want to throw my phone at the wall. I hate to say it, but the app has become highly unreliable for me. And the price increase has me thinking I need to look around at the podcast market again for the first time in a decade. I’ll probably move back to the default Apple app. My podcast listening has slowly decreased over the past few years, and I only listen to a handful of shows regularly these days (and then pick and choose episodes from a few others). My subscription renews in September 2025, so there’s still time for the bugs to get all worked out before I have to make a call. But I’ve been bummed out that one of my all-time favorite apps has been so untrustworthy lately, and I find the timing of that coinciding with a price increase to be extremely unfortunate.

    In Case You Missed It

    Music Thoughts

    • Imogen Heap can’t just show up and drop “What have you done to me?” and then casually mention on social media that it’s not part of an upcoming album. That’s just not fair! The song is too good. I want more!
    • MxPx’s dropped the one-off single “Set a Fire” a while back, but it’s stayed in pretty constant rotation for me. I love the aggressiveness and hope they continue down that path. This week had me spinning a few of their old albums, including Let it Happen, and Before Everything and After. Every time I hear “Well Adjusted,” I am shocked that it didn’t do better on the radio or find its way into the band’s live show more often. We’ll see what my final end-of-the-year stats look like, but MxPx is on track to be my most-played artist this year. They’ve been a go-to “comfort” band all year. When I’m unsure what I want to listen to, I’ve tossed one of their records on, and I’m almost always in a better mood.
    • I was not expecting much from Eve 6’s latest, Dream Fist, because their most recent output had very much been in the “not for me” bin. However, I was happily surprised by quite a bit of this. It’s catchier than I expected and brings back more of their classic ear for melody.
    • Real Friends’ latest, Blue Hour, is another nice surprise. I’ve been enjoying this era of the band and find this to be their strongest release yet. Some pretty heavy lyrical content but a super solid album.
    • Chrissy Costanza’s solo EP is worth a listen for the final track, “I Tried to Act Your Age” alone—incredible songwriting.
    • Katie Gavin (lead singer of MUNA) released a solo album at the end of October, and it feels like it flew a little under the radar. It veers in a different direction than her main project but is full of some really great songs. This feels like the kind of album people discover after the end of the year and go, “Oh, I wish I woulda listened to that last year so it would have made my end-of-the-year list.” This is your sign to listen now before you make that mistake.
    • We’re entering the “dead zone” in the music industry, where not a whole lot of new music or albums will be released. I’ll spend the next few issues trying to recap as much of the past few months as I can to make up for lost time.

    The Stats: Over the past week, I listened to 23 different artists, 36 different albums, and 366 different tracks (416 scrobbles). Here is my Top 9 from last week, and you can follow me on Apple Music and/or Last.fm.

    Entertainment Thoughts

    • I finished my biography on Franklin Roosevelt and absolutely loved it. Hannah joked that I was entering my middle-age cliche of reading about history and I was only a few years away from checking out books about World War Two out of the library. And she may be right.
    • Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story will leave you in a puddle on the floor. Absolutely worth watching, but be warned.
    • We are currently re-watching season one of Andor as we want to lead into a Star Wars re-watch this December and prepare for the second season. It really is as close to a perfect season of television as I can remember.
    • Season two of Shrinking has been delivering as well. Heartfelt with just the right amount of humor: the Bill Lawrence playbook.

    Random and Personal Stuff

    • Look at that: back-to-back weeks of writing! It feels good.

    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. Chrissy Costanza – I Tried to Act Your Age
    2. Kelsea Ballerini – Sorry Mom
    3. Less Than Jake – Dead Days (Over and Over)
    4. The Strike – American Dream
    5. Balance and Composure – Ain’t it Sweet
    6. Dylan Dunlap – The Long Way Home
    7. Unwritten Law – Blame it On Me
    8. Madison Beer – Envy the Leaves
    9. Poppy – Vital
    10. American Hi-Fi – I”m Still in Love with Rock and Roll

    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 trevorshmevor in the “Knocked Loose – You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (May 10th 2024)” thread.

    Previous editions of Liner Notes can be found here.

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