Blink–182’s new album, NINE, is great. It’s a cool blend of California and the Mark half of untitled (think “Go” and “Here’s Your Letter”, rather than “Asthenia” and “I’m Lost Without You”). The stand outs for me are “The First Time”, “Pin the Grenade”, and “No Heart to Speak Of”. I even like “I Really Wish I Hated You” much more within the sequence of this album, rather than as a stand alone single.
https://open.Spotify.com/album/4gARZz9eV7zbGbtOjhVTPF?si=M98gko1dROO0ejY2JSFkdA
The Menzingers have released three songs from their upcoming album Hello Exile, and all of them are great. The standout of the pack for me is “Anna”, which does an incredible job weaving together a sweet and sad story of love and longing. Really looking forward to the album’s release.
My wife and I saw Hereditary when it was released in theaters in 2018. I recall enjoying it – it definitely had a few great shocking and spooky moments. However, I didn’t “get” the ending. It felt like the last 5 minutes took a hard left turn.
We rewatched the movie a week or so ago, and wow is that movie better the second time around. Given that we had a year gap between the first and second viewing, the surprising moments still had a bit of a punch, but we also had a completely new perspective on the characters and their motivations. Great movie.
Its been a while since I’ve written on here, and I’ve had a few friends lately ask about utilities I run on my Mac, so I thought I’d share some of my favorites. These aren’t all of them, but these are my favorites.
Bartender 3, $15
Bartender 3 is what make this list work. Bartender hides all of the utilities I run in the background, so that I don’t have to see them. ⌥+Space later, and all of the utilities running in the background are revealed.
Greenshot, $2
Greenshot is a great and easy utility for screenshots, and there is a Mac and Windows version, which is great is you a Mac at home and Windows at work, like me. I’ve got mine set up to bring up the screenshot crosshairs with F1, then send to screenshot to my clipboard. I even used it to take the screenshots used above!
Tripmode, $8
Tripmode is a utility to modulate data use when tethered to a smartphone. The Mac makes it very easy to connect to a smartphone for data when traveling, but none of the apps on your computer (like Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, etc.) know that you’re on a network with a data cap. Tripmode solves this by allowing the user to determine which apps can use data, and these settings can be network-specific.
BetterSnapTool, $3
BetterSnapTool emulates the Windows 7 feature of snapping windows to one side of a screen. Although the Mac now has a native split screen mode, this wasn’t always the case, and BetterSnapTool brought this useful functionality to the Mac with lots of customization. I use it to simply split my screen for a moment, but if I’ll be using a split screen for a while, I’ll typically use the native Mac feature.
Amphetamine, Free
Ever need your laptop to finish something and not go to sleep. Well, Amphetamine will keep you awake.
Turbo Boost Switcher Pro, $10
I got this one from a great episode for ATP. Basically, if I’m using my laptop in “laptop” mode, I want great battery life and I’m unlikely to be doing anything computationally expensive. If I’m sitting at my desk and plugged in, I want my laptop to be as fast as possible. Turbo Boost Switcher Pro does this by enabling and disabling Turbo Boost, which pushes your CPU past its base clock speed at the expense of battery life, based on whether your computer is plugged in or not. Better battery life when using the battery, better functionality when on power. Marco Arment has a good post on this too.
Parallels, $80
Okay, Parallels isn’t really a utility, but I think its at least worth mentioning. Parallels is a Virtual Machine software, which means you can other operating systems within Parallels on your Mac. This is another indispensable app that I need from time to time, when I need to run a Windows specific application. Parallels gets an upgrade every year, and I’ve sort of put myself on an every-other year upgrade cycle. Those seem to have big benefits in how resource intensive Parallels can be.
CleanMyMac X, $40
CleanMyMac X will, hold on for this one, clean up your Mac. Dump your RAM, clean out Caches, empty your trash, etc., all in one fell swoop.
Screens Connect, Free (iOS counterpart is $20)
Screens is a great iOS app that I use to connect back to my Mac. Screens Connect is the Mac end that lets my access my Mac from my iPhone or iPad when I’m out and about.
1Password, $5/month for five accounts
I love 1Password. 1Password is a password storage app, which keeps track of all your passwords and will generate random passwords for all your accounts, on all of your devices. Theres a version of 1Password for every operating system. They even have a feature to inform you if a website where. you have an account is hacked! This is another one that is absolutely indispensable for me.
Backblaze, $50/machine/year
Back-ups are a part of any healthy digital life. Backblaze will back up as much as you can give it for $50 a year. This is mostly for a worst case scenario. If my laptop and my local backup were to fail, all my data is also stored at Backblaze.
Time Machine, Free
This is the only 1st party utility on this list, and it’s for a good reason. Time Machine is great, simple, and reliable back up solution for the Mac. At a minimum, you can plug in a hard drive and it’ll back up everything new. At its best, you can point it to a NAS and back up wirelessly every hour.
FruitJuice, $10
FruitJuice is just a handy utility to track battery health. It’ll send little push notifications asking you to unplug your laptop from time to time, and with updates for how much battery life you have. In addition, it tracks how many cycles your battery has, and its overall health.
The Wonder Years are a band to grow up with. Every album has caught me at a specific point in life where you’ve learned more about life, and you’re not quite sure how to handle it. Their catalogue is basically just a diary of growing up, starting with a stereotypical “I want to get out of this town” pop-punk album, to an album about community, then the weight of becoming an adult, then social responsibility. Their most recent album Sister Cities is an album about grief and absence.
The lyrics to the album masterfully weave together metaphors across tracks to describe appreciation and longing for your loved ones while you’re grieving. The opener “Raining in Kyoto” sets the tone for the record lyrically – desparation and longing for your loved ones when you’re far away and grieving: “Raining in Kyoto. I’m starting to shake. They’ll hold your service tomorrow. I’m an ocean away.”
I’ve really grabbed on to how the album uses colors to set the scene and feeling. Its as though the lyrics describe those moments you tell yourself to take in the scenery and appreciate where you are, despite whatever is going. Thats a constant theme of this album: taking a moment away from grief to appreciate who is still there, but to still feel that grief. Its a fine line to walk, but this record does it skillfully.
This album isn’t as instantly accessible as Surburbia I’ve Given You All, and Now I’m Nothing, and thats okay. Sister Cities needs you to chew a bit and sink into what they songs are about. The album’s closer “The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me” ties all of the metaphors through the record together, which gives the previous songs significantly more meaning, and begs you to listen again. While we’re having a rainy spring time in the Pacific Northwest, I think thats just what I’ll do.
I started listening to Underoath right around the time Define the Great Line came out. I followed them throughout that album cycle, through the next album cycle (Lost in the Sound of Separation), through the loss of their singer/drummer Aaron Gillespie, and into the album cycle for Ø (Disambiguation). I love all of those albums. I remember how they did the promotion of the first song released from Ø (Disambiguation), “Illuminator”. They published a single layer of audio of the song one day at a time for a week. What a great way to show off each of their parts.
I remember my disappointment when they announced their breakup in 2012. I remember being even more disappointed that their farewell tour was a paltry 9 dates on the east coast, only a year after I moved from Atlanta to Seattle.
Shortly after Underoath was over, a friend recommended Bring Me the Horizon. I had listened to one song by that band previously, “Diamonds Aren’t Forever”. That song was a little too heavy for me, as was the album it came from. However, the band had lost a guitarist, and gained a new member handling keys and samples – their arrangement was now nearly identical to what Underoath had been when they broke up. Bring Me The Horizon had just released “Shadow Moses” from the upcoming Sempiternal, and they had left behind the harsh vocals of their prior records for a more focused sound. BMTH had fallen squarely in the hole Underoath had vacated. Sempiternal felt like the Underoath album I wanted in 2013.
The next Bring Me the Horizon album That’s the Spirit was good as well. The band had continued to grow and began seeing some main stream success as they had moved even further away from the metal side of their influences for more of a main stream hard rock band (See: “Follow You”). Hell, they even opened for Justin Bieber at a few dates.
Which brings me to the new Underoath album, Erase Me, which is their first album since the band reunited for a hand full of anniversary tours for Define the Great Line. Erase Me is a solid album – I’m on my third way through it now – but the first thing that occurs to me is how much it reminds me of That’s the Spirit. The album is easily the most main stream metal Underoath has ever been. Thats not a bad thing in this case – it just is, in fact, the case. Songs like “Rapture” and “ihateit” could easily be played on a modern rock radio station, and that would be a first for Underoath. Given how much success Bring Me the Horizon has had going in this musical direction coming from a similar musical place as Underoath, I really hope this album carries Underoath to some big places. I’d love to see those guys rocking into their 60’s
The Fever 333
I’ve been checking out this new EP from The Fever 333. The singer is former of another great band, letlive., and Travis Barker, of blink–182, plays drums on a few songs. They’re sort of a mix of the singers former band, letlive., Run the Jewels, and Rage Against The Machine. This band has crazy energy.
Now, Now
On the total opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve gotten into this new song by Now, Now and their last album, Threads. This is another must check out band. The new song AZ is great fun.
Things have been busy for me lately, so I haven’t had much to say or write about. I’ll note a few thoughts I’ve had lately though:
Here are some of the podcasts I enjoyed in 2017, in no particular order:
Star Wars Minute
The Accidental Tech Podcast
S-Town
Dirty John
The Ezra Klein Show
Left, Right & Center
Mac Power Users
Stay Tuned with Preet
The Talk Show with John Gruber
The Vergecast
The Weeds
Pod Save America
The Hilarious World of Depression
2017 was a good music year. Here are some of my favorite records from the year, quasi-ordered by how much I liked them:
The Menzingers, After the Party
Confession: I once left The Menzingers/mewithoutyou coheadlining tour after mewithoutyou played and missed The Menzingers. Prior to this album, I never “got” The Menzingers. I thought they were over rated. Boy, was I wrong. This has everything I love in an album – its fun, its punk, its heavy, its emotional, its catchy, its clever. The album starts with “Tellin’ Lies” and an awesome little guitar lick into a killer lyric: “Everything is terrible when buying marijuana makes you feel like a criminal”, and “Lookers” is an all-time top 10 song for me. “Like a wedding ring that never fit right” absolutely kills me every times I listen to it. This one is not leaving the rotation soon.
Manchester Orchestra, A Black Mile to the Surface
My relationship with this band goes back pretty far – I once saw Manchester Orchestra for free in Atlanta’s Virginia Highlands at about 2 in the afternoon, and I’ve loved everything they’ve put out over the years. Consequently, I knew I had to lower my expectations about this album pretty hard. I didn’t need to – this might be their best effort to date, and oh boy, is this album emotionally heavy. I had to turn it off for the first few months it was out because it was affecting me a bit too much. I can’t even bother to list off some of my favorite songs or lyrics off this album – its all good. It’s a well thought out and balanced album, and highlights Andy’s songwriting skills. I’m glad these guys are getting some radio attention for this record – I’ve heard “The Gold” on the radio and the gym several times now. They’ve been at it for well over a decade and deserve all the success in the world.
The Maine, Lovely, Little Lonely
About three years ago, someone deep inside The Maine’s headquarters must have flipped the switch to turn the band from a good pop band to an incredible pop band. That is particularly highlighted in their latest tour, “Modern Nostalgia”, where the band played their latest two albums in full each night, American Candy and Lovely, Little, Lonely. The Maine must know those two records stand a head above their previous works. If American Candy is the sugar high, Lovely, Little, Lonely is the crash. Songs like “Black Butterflied and Deja Vu”, and “Taxi” are emotionally devastating, but those catchy chorus’s almost make you forget that: “I lose my voice when I look at you / can’t make a noise though I’m trying to / tell you all the right words / waiting for the right words” and “In the back seat, when you ask me ‘Is the sadness everlasting?, I pulled you closer, looked at you, and said ‘Love, I think it is’”. In contrast, songs like “The Sound of Reverie” put the eternal optimism of pop music to the forefront. The interspersed short tracks “Lovely”, “Little”, and “Lonely” really bring the entire album together and contribute to how coherent the record is. Let’s hope they don’t flip that switch again.
Circa Survive, The Amulet
I don’t think this album is going to win over any non-believers for Circa Survive. I do think that if you’re a Circa Survive fan, you’re going to love this album. This band still has everything I love about them – they’re a weird sort of ambient punk you just want to dance to and The Amulet shows all of it off. It’s a very consistent album, yet not repetitive. I always find albums that straddle that fence to be particularly impressive. The guitars are just as spacious as ever, and this may be Anthony Greens best vocal performance to date – he sounds just incredible. “At Night It Gets Worse” is the highlight of this album for me, although the whole thing it great.
Paramore, After Laughter
This record is much darker than the upbeat music and artwork would leave you believe. Hayley feels confused and disillusioned throughout the record, and that really comes through in songs like “Fake Happy”. In 20 years from now, we’ll be looking back on Paramore like people look back on Bowie – every album cycle has its own aesthetic. They’re true artists and really care about what they’re doing.
Knuckle Puck, Shapeshifter
Knuckle Puck took me by surprise with their previous album “Copacetic”. This album took me a little while to love the way I instantly loved Copacetic, but proves to be a worthy successor. Shapeshifter is deceptively accessible the first time or two around, but will really grow on you over time, despite some thinly veiled metaphors (i.e. “Double Helix”). Everyone can relate and sing along to songs like “Want Me Around” or “Nervous Passenger”. The former is a standout for this album and the bands career: “Afraid to call and see what’s good, or is it simply understood that there’s a reason you don’t want me around”, and “They say that time heals everything, but what if time is everything?” I’m looking forward to spinning this album again in the spring.
The National, Sleep Well Beast
I was asked to describe The National to someone recently, and I responded half-jokingly by saying “they’re probably Radiohead’s favorite pop band”. The National aren’t exactly a pop band, but they are catchy and are just tinged with some interesting timing and mixing Radiohead are famous for – just not as weird as Radiohead can be. The guitar riff in “The System Sleeps in Total Darkness” stands out not for its technical prowess, but rather the hours they clearly put into getting that sound. “Sleep Well Beast” is a worthwhile follow up to the monumental “Trouble Will Find Me”, and has satisfied my itch for some grown-man Dad rock.
Foo Fighters, Concrete and Gold
This album’s name is awful, but the album itself is fantastic. The albums opening track “T-Shirt” is juvenile and anthemic, calling back to Queen both during the name drop, and when the harmonies come in, “I don’t want to be Queen, I just want to keep my T-Shirt clean.” “Run” feels like another attempt at a song like “Rope” from Wasting Light. “The Sky is a Neighborhood” and “Sunday Rain” stand out as unique songs within the bands catalogue, with drummer Taylor Hawkins singing the latter. This album has moments like that reveal how Dave Grohl and company are just playing with us – they’re wielding Rock and Roll itself like a master swordsman wields his weapon.
John Mayer, The Search for Everything
Along the lines of how bad of an album title Concrete and gold is, The Search for Everything may be worse. The album cover for this record may be worse still. The roll of for this album was awful – I feel like no one noticed the “Waves” of songs John released. All in all, I don’t know that I’ve been more disappointed in the release of some really fantastic songs. “Still Feel Like Your Man”, “Moving On and Getting Over”, and “You’re Gonna Live Forever in Me” should be staples at future Mayer concerts, and highlight how he continues to be a master songwriter.
Brand New, Science Fiction
Okay, there’s no reason to beat around this bush: Jesse Lacey did some fucked up stuff. What he did is indefensible, and those he victimized deserve to be heard. I am doing my best to separate the art from the artist with Brand New. Brand New is my favorite band and Jesse Lacey is not Brand New. Although, to be honest, I’m not finding it as hard to separate him from this album as I am with Deja Entendu – your mileage may vary. That said:
If the Foo Fighters are wielding Rock and Roll, Brand New are wielding their own legacy on this album (albeit that has been blindsided by the Lacey accusations, but I digress). I don’t think I’ve ever anticipated an album more or for longer than I have for this. It had been over seven years since they had released Daisy when Science Fiction was mailed on CDs to a few hundred un-expecting fans as a single track – the most “Brand New” way to release their final album. This album really is a return to form for the band. It hits the sweet spot between the sing-song’ed-ness of Deja with the tenor and timbre of The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. The album has some classic verbose Brand New lines, like “It lit me up like a rag soaked in gasoline in the neck of a bottle breaking right at my feet” on “Lit Me Up” and some great simple lines like “Well, I guess that thats just depression, no sense in fighting it now” on “Can’t Get It Out”. Every song on this album is important, and each has its place on the album and in Brand New’s legacy – its almost impossible to think that they achieved the expectations everyone had for this album.
Other honorable mentions:
New Found Glory, Makes Me Sick – I love this band. I always will. They’re fun.
The Wonder Years, Burst and Decay – I wrote about this release a few months back. Its still great. They’re great, and teasing for a 2018 release. Hooray!
AFI, AFI (The Blood Album) – This is the best AFI record since Winter Underground.
Finally, my 2017 Spotify Wrap up:
At Ken 