NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

On the first season of labeled , Aaron Marsh talked about his writing process for Copeland 's debut album, Beneath Medicine Tree . In early 2019, he returned to the podcast to talk about the band’s latest album, Blushing . If most listeners casually picked up the two records, forgivably, they'd assume that they were listening to different bands. Beneath is a guitar-driven product of late '90s/early '00 emo rock. The album has mostly an optimistic tone. Blushing is a dark electronic-influenced album with darker lyrics. Marsh told Labeled host  Matt Carter that rather than writing lyrics that are easily pinned to real people, like his ex girlfriend Paula (in the song " When Paula Sparks ") he doesn't "want to write songs about [his] private life." He says, instead, "I want to write poetic songs about my private life." The band's fourth album, You Are My Sunshine , does just that. Listeners don't know the deep sense of loss, i

" Harbinger " was supposed to be the last song we ever heard from Anberlin . In 2013, the band agreed that they would release one last album and tour the world one last time. Stephen Christian  talked openly about that dark hour in the band and the recording industry at the time, and because he was the only one speaking, many fans wondered if there was bad blood. However, in 2017, which was certainly not "forever" after their "final show" in December of 2014, the band announced a reunion supporting their good friends Underoath , who had also gotten back together. Since that reunion show, the band has toured off-and-on again, and most recently, performed all seven of their studio albums on livestreams. Yesterday, the band performed the album they never intended to play live, Lowborn . But right after the band's final movement in their requiem, they premiered a new song called " Two Graves, " along with the announcement that a new record is in

Though he only has 45 monthly listeners on Spotify, I can see Ian Mahan joining the ranks of folk artists like Denison Witmer , William Fitzsimmons , Matthew Perryman Jones , and all the other NoiseTrade artists I've been listening to. I added this song a few months ago when I was looking for Aaron Marsh collaborations.  After taking a minor dive into his other works, I feel like this is one of the reasons I write about music: to discover something new, something obscure. From his mellow interpretation of " Eye of the Tiger " to his piano/guitar melodies intertwined with the small-town-America feel of a boy raised in a small Illinois town, but who has moved to Colorado out of a dream or out of necessity, I hope to get better acquainted with Mahan in the weeks to come. THIS TOWN IS CLEARING OUT. "Art & Vida" tells the story about an older couple who have witnessed the decay of the small town after NAFTA took the jobs overseas. It's implied that Art los

  Anchor & Braille has been Anberlin 's lead singer Stephen Christian 's side project for a while. Some of Anberlin's songs started out as Anchor & Braille songs. In 2009, Christian collaborated with Aaron Marsh and a few other hometown musicians including Louis DeFabrizio of Gasoline Heart and released A&B's debut record Felt , an album that feels like if Christian were the lead singer of Copeland somewhere between their In Motion and Eat, Sleep,   Repeat releases. Anchor and Braille's sound would very greatly over their occasional four albums as well as the make up of the 'band' would just become Stephen Christian collaborating in the studio with other musicians. I have yet to listen to 2020's Tension  from start to finish, but of the three albums, Felt feels the best. You can tell that it's the same singer of Cities and Never Take Friendship Personal struggling relationships.  SHE MAKES THREATS I HOPE THAT SHE SEES THROUGH. Felt

  Ivory Circle is a trio fronted by former middle school choir teacher, Connie Hong along with muti-instrumentalist Chris Beeble, and percussionist/drummer Rob Spradling. I found the band when I went on an Apple Music search to find songs on which Copeland's Aaron Marsh was featured. Unsurprisingly, Ivory Circle has also toured with Copeland, and this track sounds like it could have been produced Marsh as it sounds like it would be at home on a Copeland record. Chris Beeble, however, produces all of IC's work. The band has four EPs and today's song comes from the middle release of their triangle series:  Equilateral, Isosceles, and Scalene-- the first of which is not available on Apple Music. I foresee a rainy weekend when I will delve into the albums, perhaps even purchasing the albums not available on their bandcamp page. I think it's so important right now to celebrate and help indie musicians right now as they can't make money through touring. YOU CAN SEE MY BR

It was a rainy summer break during Freshman year of college. I was still driving my '91 Toyota Corolla, and that was the summer that I binged the first three Copeland albums. It started with 2003's Beneath Medicine Tree, the indie/rock concept album about love and loss. About a month later I bought, 2005's In Motion , which was a little more musically diverse. The next year's Eat, Sleep, Repeat , was closer to musical theater than rock. Each Copeland album had its own unique mood. Today's song, " Coffee ," comes from BMT, which is the most immature of the Copeland albums. Lyricist and singer Aaron Marsh was fine-tuning his craft at writing sappy love songs, and this album's lyrics tended to be a little too over the top. The song " Coffee " appears as track 9, with a story as cliche as they get--two small town kids falling in love while talking all night at the diner. The brief brush drum solo toward the end sounds just like coffee shop musi

  I'd recommend first reading the lyrics  and reading the notes. And of course, listening to the song . Today in America is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I chose this song from 2017 as a warning that although things are picking up a little, it's now time to work harder than ever for social justice.  I first heard of Propaganda on the BadChristian Podcast . He talked about his song " Precious Puritans ," which deserves a blog post of its own. However, when he came out with the Crooked album in 2017 and had this track with Copeland 's Aaron Marsh calling out Christians for their support of politics that forsakes the African American and non-white community, it put into words I could have never formed to tell how angry I had become.  PRAY TO MY SAVIOR, AND MIDDLE FINGER TO MY NEIGHBOR . In an episode of Straight White American Jesus , historian Randall Balmer points out that religious leaders such as Jerry Falwell tried to raise doubt in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr