NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  One rainy day in March 2005, I saw    Acceptance 's  Phantoms   in Walmart's Pop/Rock section. I picked up the album and wondered who this band was. I looked at the back and saw the track listing. There was a song titled " This Conversation Is Over ," which was the same name as one of the songs on  The Sims 2 University   expansion pack. Could it be the same group? I rarely bought albums without listening to them first. That's why I have so many Christian Rock albums. The Family Christian Store had a sample CD for almost every album sold in their stores. However, albums sold in major retailers might let you preview a few of the songs. I don't think the preview was available for this album. Nevertheless, I bought this album and put it into the fickle CD player in my 1991 Toyota Corolla. Immediately it became one of the most played albums of the next two years along with Anberlin 's  Never Take Friendship Personal ,  Falling Up 's  Crashings  and  Dawn

This Is All I Know is the final album by Number One Gun . The band from Chico, California, became one member-- Jeff Schneeweis —in 2007 on the band’s The North Pole Project . The other members went on to form the band Surrogate and work with other bands such as Emery .  There was a lot of controversy surrounding Number One Gun's last album, related to the late fulfillment of crowdfunding. Some backers for the 2014 album claimed as of 2021 they hadn’t received what they had been promised. After releasing This Is All I Know, Schneeweis declared that Number One Gun finished and started releasing music under the moniker Lael . This Is All I Know is the end of a Christian Rock era: a band that stuck around even though they never particularly stood out as anyone’s favorite band. HEAVY IS UPON US. Just as Anberlin had announced their farewell in 2014, several other bands called it quits. In 2017 the band Yellowcard , along with Anberlin drummer Nathan Young, recorded their final albu

In 2017, Aaron Sprinkle released Real Life , his last release on Tooth & Nail Records . The legendary producer had released solo work sporadically since the ‘90s; however, being the go-to producer for some of the most successful bands in Alternative and Hard Christian Rock was time-consuming, and Sprinkle felt that producing great records was more successful than trying to promote a solo career. Sprinkle’s production always felt cutting-edge when he recorded, whether for Anberlin , Acceptance , Demon Hunter , Falling Up , or a host of other bands. Real Life, however, feels very 2017. Today, let's explore the album, track by track. 1. Invincible kicks off the album with that 2017 electronic sound. Featuring Poema ’s Elle Puckett contributing a spoken-word/ rap part, the song sounds nothing like what you’d expect from either artist. The lyrics seem to be the speaker coming to realize that he is not invincible. Puckett tries to convince the first speaker that he never needed to

I can't explain this well, but there are some songs that give me a feeling for particular weather. I associate songs with seasons, even if the lyrics have nothing to do with that season. As the weather has gotten chilly lately, I wanted to create a playlist of songs that give me a warm feeling by somehow building a cold atmosphere first, especially for the mid-Autumn.  If this playlist makes no sense to you, I'm sure you're not alone. But maybe it does. I hope that it brings you warmth.

While the rock music was falling out of favor in the 2010s,   All Time Low 's career continued to gain momentum. Formed in 2003 and heavily influenced by   NoFx   and   Blink -182   the band became a force in the emo phase of the   Warped Tour   scene. The band became famous for their jocular onstage banter and their mock-turned serious feud with   Metro Station . And in that jocular nature, the skinny, nerdy bandmates clad in only their   tighty-whities   appeared on MySpace's home page the week before their sophomore album   So Wrong, It's Right  dropped in 2007. I DON'T MIND IF YOU FUCK UP (RUIN) MY LIFE.  Fast forward thirteen years. I have deleted a lot of music I acquired in college if I didn't like the songs. I enjoyed laughing at  Blink- 182 videos  in middle and high school just as much as any white boy, but joke pop-punk got old when emo bands dug into deeper subjects. It turns out that All Time Low was digging a bit deeper in the 2010s, flying under my ra

In the story of  Tooth & Nail Records , which became the definitive Christian Rock label in the early ‘00s,  Aaron Sprinkle  became the main producer for record after record for the label. Sprinkle is not only responsible for producing records, but he also stylized bands and artists who would have otherwise been nothing alike. So, when he wasn’t busy launching successful bands into the scene, what was he doing in his free time? Sprinkle recorded a number of solo records and two with his band, Fair . Sprinkle’s solo efforts were never as successful as the bands he recorded, and life in the studio took a toll on the musical genius.   WHERE IS IT THAT YOUR PEACE COMES FROM?  " Disappearing World " was the only hit from  this 2010 album  named after the title track. Whenever Fair--three of Sprinkle's friends from his previous band, Poor Old Lu --put out a project, it was a limited release. One single to Christian radio, a video, and a couple of local shows. And then it

  We haven’t talked about the latest Anberlin EP, Silverline . Last summer, the band released their first project since 2014’s supposed-to-be swan song, Lowborn . This time, Anberlin has partnered with Equal Vision Records , rather than with their old family at Tooth & Nail . Rather than releasing a full-length record, the band decided to release it in two parts, Silverline and Convicted , which will arrive at the end of this month. On an episode of Lead Singer Syndrome , Stephen Christian said that the band had decided to release the album in two parts because he “didn’t understand the music industry these days.”  YOU KEEP GETTING CLOSER BUT YOU’RE SO DISTANT INSIDE. Anberlin isn’t the first band to release their albums as a series of EPs. When Mae became an independent artist, they released their ( m)orning , ( a)fternoon , and ( e)vening , which later combined into ( m)(a)(e) . Relient K released their K…Is for Karaoke record in two parts. Acceptance ’s latest record was re

  One memorable scene in Dante's Inferno depicts two lovers tormented in the second layer of hell. The lovers in the second layer have been sent to hell for their lust, and as a punishment, they must blow in an unrelenting wind, possibly symbolizing their lust on earth and their lack of commitment to one partner. Two lovers, though, continuously blow past each other, touching for a second at a time before they blow in opposite directions.   BREATHING IS SO HARD IT HURTS. No, the title track from Acceptance 's sophomore record, Colliding by Design , is not about eternal conscious torment, but there is something hellish about unrequited love.  The production sounds show us what we could have expected to hear on the radio if the band had been afforded the opportunity to stay in the pop/rock culture in the late '00s and early '10s.   The early 2017 release of Colliding by Design came like a spring breeze, bringing accessible pop melodies highlighting lead singer Jason Ven