After putting out a poll on Twitter, you all answered the call, asking for a mix-tape episode on the theme of “Laying On The Floor.” So that’s exactly what we did.
But we are here this week to discuss this week to simply bring this to your attention and take a closer look at what we hope this MCR show will be. Unlike other reunion efforts, as far as we can tell, there won’t be any new music to clog the setlist. So what will they play?
We have a few humble suggestions:
Now, I am not here to justify or glorify juvenile behavior. But I think it’s worth acknowledging how up front the band was, at all times, in telling us exactly what they intended to write pop songs about: fucking. (You likely remember their most famous chorus: “You and me, baby, ain’t nothin’ but mammals -- so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”)
This is such an unfairly catchy song. It begins as a singalong, with “Hey there…” etc. But don’t be fooled -- soon one of the guitarists will drop into a Spiderman stretch (one leg bent, the other remaining straight) while the distortion pedals do their thing. On first watch, it feels a ton like “open this motherfucking pit” energy. But no, it’s not quite that. Not quite. This is VFW energy if I’ve ever seen it. You paid $7 to watch this. Normally openers play 15 minutes -- you just watched an hour’s worth of two bands playing every song they practiced earlier that day in a basement somewhere.
With all of this in mind, let’s keep this simple: in a vacuum, “She Hates Me” is a catchy hit song with an above average music video that is strangely self-aware. The song is, at the absolute least, a fantastic turn-up-the-car-radio tune. It was seemingly written for this purpose, whether the listener is going through a break-up as described by the narrator or not. As we see in the music video, people in a variety of situations may feel the way the narrator feels, and they all proceed to collectively lose it.
In the four seconds before Myspace took over and the phrase social media came to be, AIM profiles were getting more and more complex by the minute, sometimes featuring click-through blog-like portions of text. Sometimes they were full biographies, sometimes they were just a block of text, often lyrics to the person’s favorite song.
DROP EVERYTHING!!!! I just discovered this artist literally 15 minutes ago. I was listening to Stand Atlantic on YouTube while I worked on some web stuff, and I noticed the artist suddenly changed on me. A couple songs by Mallrat played, and I genuinely enjoyed them. I sent a few texts about her to my best friend/cohost Pat, but then, it happened. Tokyo Drift started playing and the world stopped.
Mark leaves the estate and drivers a few miles down the road to the party, where he is approached by a stranger. He and the stranger engage in a round of small talk that, inevitably, forces each of them to inquire about what they both do for a living.
“I play in a house band,” Mark says, with one hand in his pocket and another one holding a red Solo cup.
“Oh?” says the stranger. “Where do you play?”
“I guess you could say it’s an abandoned house,” he says.
In defense of the pop culture scraps that Gen Y was dealt, I will make these basic claims: “American Idiot” is very good, and it was more punk to completely shift gears and successfully pull off a soaring rock opera than to continue to come out with iterations of “Dookie,” writing 2-minute songs into your 50s about how mushy your brain gets when you take pills.
We talk often on the podcast about music videos that are either way too literal to the lyrics, or tend to lack any kind of semblance to the song itself, but director Jordan Mizrahi perfectly captures the essence of the song’s meaning and energy throughout every second of this video.
The record has been out for a couple of weeks now, and we've had a chance to work through it a few dozen times, wandering back and forth in our minds (and back again, and forth again) about whether it's objectively better than her previous record "Reputation." By this point, many would concede that it is a very good record, though falls short of the Tier 1 of Taylor, a shelf occupied by "Red" and "1989."
In one week, Taylor Swift will release her new album "Lover" and that album will feature a decidedly more colorful cover than her previous record "Reputation."
Fans now have four songs to dig into ahead of that release, as well as a couple of music videos. So how have we felt in the weeks leading up to Aug. 23?
Let's ask a fan and an average person…
Close your eyes. Think about the Mount Rushmore of 2000s music. Who comes to mind? Band-aid Nelly? American Idol Season 1 Kelly Clarkson? 8-Mile Marshall Mathers?
Beyonce? JT?
If you're sitting at a bar or a barbershop, and this particular debate arose, there is at least a fair chance Paramore, led by red-hair Hayley Williams, gets brought up (if only as an honorable mention, if only to elongate the discussion).
Hoppus would fare well in a Scott Pilgrim universe, proving, most likely, to be a worthy opponent with the baselines and nananas and talk of fallen angels and grave grass and so forth, but every ying needs a yang. Alex proves to be a worthy one, and this EP feels more fun than ambitious, and it's not likely Hoppus is driven by an unquenchable urge to outduel anybody. We can love Mark for what he is and what he's brought us without going out of our way to make everyone feel bad about it.
This was legitimately one of the toughest drafts we've done. Even though Taylor's catalog is dynamic and offers something for almost anyone, it's still a more limited pool than, say, the entirety of music released in the year 2000. Additionally, each of her albums hecking rips, so leaving songs on the bleachers was going to be tough.
But the concept of living somewhere in the middle came to mind the other night when we stumbled onto the topic of the Starting Line on this week's show. We'd hoped to do a quick, breezy 40 minutes on the most popular version of their "Best of Me" music video (there are more or less three distinct versions, depending on how far down you scroll on YouTube).
What we ended up getting into, however, was a bit of an impasse on the legacy of the band and the different things that probably hurt their standing as time moves forward.
One of the ideas we had for intermittent episode formats after the rebrand was song drafts. We went over and over how to categorize the songs and we thought it would be fun as hell to draft them by year for our ultimate mixtapes.
We started at the year 2000, which in hindsight may have been the biggest mistake we ever made, missing Blink-182’s Enema of the State by 6 months. (Don’t worry, we found a loophole for that one.)
I recently reached out to Sam Pura, owner of and chief engineer at The Panda Studios to see if he could answer a few questions about the production of The Story So Far’s new album, “Proper Dose” via email. Surprisingly, he responded within hours, and requested a phone call instead.
My first thought was, ‘holy shit, that’s way too much pressure’, but nothing good comes of just hanging out in your comfort zone, so I pushed it a step further and asked if we could record the conversation for my podcast, Reminiscent. I do the show with my best friend, and we mainly talk about music from the genre, so I figured a break from the normal weekly routine would be well accepted by our listeners. Again, much to my pleasure, he agreed, and we set a date.
Proper Dose Album Art. Available Now
Within 2 minutes of the recording, I realized why he preferred a phone call to an email… there was a hell of a lot to talk about, and an email wouldn’t do it justice. I originally planned on asking a barrage of questions focused on the production from a technical/production angle, but the 80 minute conversation took a different direction. The first 25 minutes or so were heavily focused on the headaches and industry politics that hindered the initial progress of the album, as well as the overall sound.
I was able to get a couple of straight answers out of Sam about the recording processes, although he claimed at one point that he didn’t want to give away too much of his IP, or intellectual property. That’s totally fine with me, but it made me have to rethink the entire point of the interview in real time, which was difficult, as I don’t typically do this kind of thing.
However, the interview turned out better than I thought, and as it’s too difficult to type out all that was discussed, I’ll just drop a link to the podcast below. Really, there was an awful lot going on, and I’m super glad we recorded it all.
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Vancouver B.C. emo / pop punk band Youth Fountain, formerly Bedroom Talk is the newest name on the Pure Noise roster. This announcement explains why their much anticipated debut full length album "Letters to Our Former Selves" has been stalled with very little explanation. The record is now slated for a 2019 release, but their fans have a brand new music video (watch below) and an EP of their previous releases to enjoy for the time being.