NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  Fiction  Family  was a side project found by  Christian Rock band Switchfoot 's Jon Foreman and bluegrass band Nickel Creek 's Sean Watkins . Eventual Switchfoot, Tyson Motensbocker producer Tyler Chester and Aaron Redfield also joined the group.  The band produced several folk rock recordings and a free Holiday EP on NoiseTrade (now Paste ).  The album is not available on streaming sites, so besides my YouTube playlist , I will include "California Christmas" from Switchfoot's latest release this is our Christmas album.  But I will include "I Don't Need No Santa Claus" because I think it nails the meaning of Christmas that I've been appreciating this holiday season. I DON'T NEED NO CHRISTMAS SONGS.  Christmas this year feels unfinished. There are some years that I'm in a holiday spirit from September to February. Other years I'm just glad that Christmas ended. But this year I feel as if Christmas didn't actually happen. Fo

  With the turning of the calendar to the last month of the year comes goodies from Spotify and Apple Music.  This morning I checked my Spotify Wrapped and my Apple Music Replay '22 and how different they were! First of all, I noticed that there was no Anberlin in my Apple Music statistics. I wonder if tracks that I imported from before I subscribed to Apple Music count? This year I listened to Apple Music for my personal listening and Spotify for my blog. I listened to Spotify considerably less than Apple Music, though last year I jealously watched as my friends displayed their Wraps on Facebook and Instagram. But my top song only had eight plays so I don't know if that counts. What was that top song? " Carlo Rossi " by Tyson Motsenbocker .  TAKE ME ON A NEW VACATION.   "Carlo Rossi" (Love in the Face of Great Danger) is my pick for song of the year. Tyson Motsenbocker condenses a novel's worth of theme into a single song while offering vivid imagery th

For some musical acts, it takes a while for their audience to take them seriously. Take for example Relient K . After three records of lyrics about Marylin Manson eating girlfriends , manipulating emotional girls to wear mood rings , and fantasizing about showing up to an '80s-themed prom in a pink tux listening to Tears for Fears , the band scored two mainstream pop hits from their not-quite-as-cheeky Mmhmm album.  TOO OLD TO BE GROWING UP.    Relient K's latest effort Air for Free was released in 2016 and the band continues to tour with the record. While the band gets playful with songs like " Local Construction ," " Cat ," " Mrs.  Hippopotamuses '" and " Elephant Parade ," there are serious moments on the record. One of the most serious songs is " Man ," the fifth track. Relient K's early music was almost exclusively punk rock--electric guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. But little by little, Relient K began introdu

  As the Christian Rock releases from Tooth & Nail have been ebbing in the current music market, the new Tyson Montsonbocker record is no exception. Motsenbocker explained on the Black Sheep Podcast that his third record, Milk Teeth , moves away from spiritual subjects but the songs are more rooted in stories about people he knows and about growing up and realizing that life isn’t exactly what his parents and teacher told him life would be.  LEARNED THE BACKSEAT LESSONS IN A WHITE CHURCH VAN. But steering away from Christian and spiritual themes Tyson Motsenbocker doesn’t necessarily divorce Milk Teeth from his Christian upbringing. Instead, Milk Teeth sounds something like a Phoebe Bridgers , Lucy Dacus , Julien Baker , or certain Buzzfeed writers who write wistfully about episodes from evangelical pasts. For Motsenbocker on Milk Teeth, that evangelical past isn’t particularly devout. Today’s song, “ Wendy Darling ,” has a backdrop of youth group in the third verse, but even w

  It's officially spooky season, so I decided to make a playlist celebrating the spookier songs I've blogged about or artists that had a spooky song. The 31 tracks that I included perhaps won't make you writhe in horror, but they have a loose connection to Halloween. Maybe there's a lyrics or a creepy video, or maybe it was just a song that I listened to a lot in October. I will post the Spotify playlist below and links to the posts and the tracks so that you can read the spooky stories behind the tracks.  1.       " Ghost " by Yellow Ostrich 2. " Closer " by Kings of Leon 3. " Unholy " by Sam Smith ft. Kim Petras 4. " I'm Pretty Sure I'm Out of Luck and Have No Friends " by Underoath 5. " Two Graves " by Anberlin 6. " Moonlit " by Falling Up 7. " Panic Switch " by Silversun Pickups 8. " Killer " by Chvrches   9. " Midnight City " by M83 10 " Edge of Seventeen "

Tyson Motsenbocker  released his second full-length record,  Someday I'll Make It All Up to You ,  on Valentine's Day of 2020. Like with most early 2020 releases, the plan was to release the record and tour  in the spring. That tour started but was quickly canceled due to the beginning of the pandemic. While the anxieties and existential questions raised by the pandemic are not intentional themes, Someday   was definitely a record that could resonate with listeners who feel the world is slipping away from them.  A NEW DAY'S COMING.  Working with producer Tyler Chester , Tyson Motsenbocker involves more production on his  Someday I'll Make It All Up to You than his previous efforts. Chester is a musician known for his production on Switchfoot 's 2019 record  Native Tongues .  While Motsenbocker claims Switchfoot's Jon Foreman as his mentor, and given that both Switchfoot's hometown and Motsenbocker's second home town is San Diego and their prior tours and

This is certainly a gimmick to publish more content, but I was listening to 2022+ on Spotify on Friday and on a lark, I thought that I really wanted the AppleMusic version. Also, it's been half a year since I talked about the playlist directly, and it's undergone quite a bit of alteration since then. I tried to arrange the songs into a cohesive playlist, but when I'm working with different genres, it's a little hard. Also, I made a few deliberate choices to change the songs to offer more variety to the playlist. So instead of " Sine from Above ," I included " Babylon " by Lady Gaga. I hope AppleMusic listeners enjoy this list. Maybe a YouTube list is next instead of a repost from last year. 1. " Bad Love " by Key is today's song. It's an infectious dance song that I wrote about last year. It's worth a repeat.  2. " Shivers " by Ed Sheeran  3. "Babylon" by Lady Gaga 4. "Sometimes" by MUNA 5. "

  In 2016, Tyson Motsenbocker signed to Tooth & Nail Records and released his debut LP, Letters to Lost Loves . Motsenbocker had been deeply affected by the loss of his mother and decided to go on a walk between San Diego and San Francisco to process his grief. Some of those reflections could be heard on Letters. Although Motsenbocker didn't follow up Letters with a full length until 2020, Someday I'll Make It All Up to You , he released two EPs in 2017, Almira and A Kind Invitation .  I KISSED YOU AFTER MIDNIGHT. Almira is a beautiful EP with 5 songs, including " Rust " (see post) and " Coeur d'Alene ," and A Kind Invitation includes " Talk All Night for Nothing ," (see post) which Motsenbocker would go on to perform with Switchfoot 's Jon Foreman and release as a single, the eponymous storytelling, spoken word track; and today's song " Something in the Way ," which deals revisits relationship material as "Talk A

I decided to do something a little different today. I'm going to present my first playlist within a playlist: 2021+. When my friend Stephen Barry  chooses his top songs of a given year, he gives two years of wiggle room for the records he missed. My format is not like Mr Barry and his Orchestra , but I thought that it would be interesting to make a playlist of the best songs I blogged about about last year that fit within a two year time frame. I'm going to stick to one entry per artist as usual and leave links for the posts. Today's song, "Counterfeit" by Wolves at the Gate, comes from a 2019 album, so it barely makes the list. First, I will post the Spotify playlist: The songs listed on this playlist: 1. " Cold Air " by Acceptance. The lead single from 2020's Wild, Free  is a song about a community torn apart by prejudice. Also check out " Wasted Nights " and " Dark Age. " 2. " Counterfeit " by Wolves at the Gate fro