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Tape Five – The Roaring 2020s Review

I gotta commend Tape Five for being consistent. Most of the other (good) electro swing artists have since moved on to other styles, but Tape Five has always been a swing-first group. That doesn’t mean everything they’ve produced has been a hit. In fact, the last album of theirs I liked was 2012’s Swing Patrol. But The Roaring 2020s proves that they’re still a band worth keeping an eye on. What’s helped is a tad more emphasis on the electro side of things. The beats feel slightly heavier and vocals slightly more digitized than I would normally expect from these folks. The mostly instrumental song, “Duesenberg,” for instance, could very well pass as a single straight from Swingrowers or Klischee.

Tape Five doesn’t go full instrumental very often, though. They certainly like those speakeasy vocals, which, I’ll admit, can be a little grating after a while. This isn’t an album I can listen to on repeat; there are some songs I just automatically start skipping. The weakest one is “Happy,” a cover that’s not even as good as the original everyone’s tired of hearing, anyway. There are other covers on the album, as well, though I don’t mind this rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff” as much. For all I know, most of The Roaring 2020s are covers. But even if they are, Tape Five infuses them with enough energetic, toe-tapping fun to feel unique. Overall, this may be their best work yet, and I look forward to future releases.

Living with Yourself – Season 1 Review

Living with Yourself is like an elongated episode of Black Mirror. If you can excuse the outlandish technology—they can clone a person and his/her memories in a day?!—then there’s plenty of opportunity to relish in the aftermath. The show does present some interesting ideas, mostly in the form of the clone being in love with and feeling like he’s married to the main character’s wife. I mean, how would you come to terms with that, no matter who you are in this love triangle? The fact that a “love triangle” is the show’s only source of a plot, however, leaves much to be desired. Having a clone of you running about, even if you tried to pass him off as a twin brother, would raise so many questions that the show either ignores or merely flirts with and then abandons.

I kept thinking back to another Netflix sitcom called Sick Note that was equally bingeable and forgettable thanks to its inability to lean too far into dark comedy or compelling drama. Paul Rudd is still great, of course, and does a believable job playing Old Miles and the clone who’s had the weight of the world scrubbed from his DNA. The two don’t interact as much as you would like, though (probably to cut down on costly special effects), so it periodically feels like they may as well be in different shows. The wife, Kate, does act as a central anchor, but we don’t really get to see or appreciate things from her point of view. Sure, there’s a fun surprise at the end that attempts to unite the three characters. Looking back at the season as a whole, however… it’s not necessarily earned.

Portal Knights Review

This was a pretty fun game that my wife enjoyed just as much as I did, though for different reasons. While I was off doing quests and exploring new islands, she hung back on the first island to build a house to dump all of our trophies in. I didn’t really care for the Minecrafty stuff at first, but then I realized those additions weren’t necessarily for me. If you like crafting, you can spend hundreds of hours in this game. Otherwise, it’s a cutesy gimmick that sometimes helps (like building a dirt tower to reach a high platform) and sometimes gets in the way. For instance, your inventory constantly fills up with different block types you don’t need.

That’s one of my biggest gripes with Portal Knights. Inventory management is a pain in the butt. I was constantly having to trash items, because my backpack was too full of blocks, scrolls, weapons, furniture, ingredients, and other trinkets. There are already too many types of items to pick up, made worse by the fact that they can’t be stacked very high. Why do ingredients max out at 50 and dirt blocks max out at 400? Feels like an annoying way to force you to return home and build more chests to hold all this crap. The fact that you can teleport home at any time does lessen this pain point, though.

Portal Knights is a very forgiving game in that regard. Not only can you teleport home but you can teleport to the beginning of any other island/world at will. This is a great incentive to explore the map and open up more locations. It’s a pretty big map, after all, with a lot of environmental diversity, from snow to lava to moon rock. I really enjoyed finding a portal to a new island, meeting its NPCs, and literally digging into its random dungeons in search of better loot. Unfortunately, the camera makes for some claustrophobic fights, especially in those underground dungeons. But that’s my only other complaint in an otherwise excellent and whimsical RPG.

Disenchantment – Season 2 Review

I’m calling it Season 2, I don’t care. Disenchantment’s not going to be the one to usher in the era of “parts.” If that sounds like a bitter way to start a review, it’s because I am bitter. Season 1 didn’t exactly leave me with high hopes, and Season 2 is even rockier. At this point, the team might as well scrap it and start over with a new Groening idea. Disenchantment just doesn’t do character work or humor or narrative payoff very well. The major cliffhanger in Season 1 is quickly resolved in Season 2, leading into a series of status quo episodes, only for the season to end on a major cliffhanger again. Is Disenchantment trying to be more story-driven, or is it a cartoonish sitcom? A year later, it still feels like they don’t know what they want to do with this show.

What further suggests this may be the case is the penultimate episode going full steampunk. That episode left a really bad taste in my mouth, because the technology came out of nowhere. You can’t spend 18 episodes laying the groundwork for a medieval fantasy and then suddenly introduce airplanes and guns. If the joke is that Dreamland is “behind the times,” that could work given a slower introduction to the bigger steampunk world. The way it’s presented, though, feels more like the team’s rushing to get to a point where they can start making more Futurama-like jokes. It’s kind of sad when a show realizes it can’t live up to its predecessors. Disenchantment may have failed to take advantage of its fantasy motif, but shifting to sci-fi isn’t the right direction.

Caravan Palace – Chronologic Review

Oh man, where do I even start. Caravan Palace is (was?) one of my favorite bands, but this album doesn’t sound like CP at all. Where their previous album, Robot Face, merely tested the pop/house waters, Chronologic goes all in. It’s a natural next step, I guess, and I can’t fault the band for doubling down on what’s obviously made them more successful. But this shift in tone coupled with the departure of some of the original members means the Caravan Palace of old is long gone. That doesn’t mean the new Caravan Palace and Chronologic are bad, though, just… very different. Like, if I had first listened to any of these songs out of context, I probably wouldn’t be able to guess who it was.

The problem I have with Chronologic is that it sounds too much like everything else now. Every song places huge importance on the lyrics and guest singers, and CP’s usual quirky instrumentals get lost in the background. Take the song “Melancolia.” If you’re not into hip hop, the vocals will probably drive you nuts. But then the brief sax and piano sections are amazing. It’s a really odd intermingling of the best and worst, and I still can’t decide if I like it. That’s how I feel about the whole album. Chronologic is easy listening overall, but nothing sticks with me, nothing sinks its claws into me like CP’s older stuff. It’s a solid B by any other standards. I just normally expect an A+ from these folks.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance – Season 1 Review

Without streaming services like Netflix, would anyone else have even take a chance on a Dark Crystal TV show? A 3D-animated version, maybe, but puppetry is a hard sell. I’ll admit, there were times when the limitations of the puppets were… problematic. Every fight or battle was somewhat anticlimactic, because there’s only so much you can do smashing puppets together. The Skeksis, for instance, are supposed to be intimidating monsters that all other creatures cower before, but their gangly arms and bulky bodies suggest otherwise. You kinda have to envision that everything in this world is “puppety” by nature and Gelflings are as weak as their literal rubber skin lets on.

I say this, though, as someone who really admires and appreciates puppetry and grew up on so many Jim Henson staples. When the characters aren’t fighting, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the visuals and world building. The practical effects and animatronics are top-notch and add some much-needed realness to the fantasy and mythos that computer graphics probably couldn’t have achieved. I know, I know, you can’t make a fantasy world anymore without some computer graphics, and The Dark Crystal isn’t immune. But those moments of modern special effects do more to highlight just how grounded and tangible the puppets feel in comparison.

With all that said, is the story even any good? Truth be told, I haven’t seen the original Dark Crystal movie since I was a kid and don’t remember it that fondly. This being a prequel, though, you don’t have to be a long-time fan to know what’s going on. If anything, movie foreknowledge is a disservice. The world in the Dark Crystal movie is grim. The entire time I was watching the new TV show, I kept thinking, “How can they pull off a happy ending?” The events in Season 1 are interesting and get you really caring about many characters big and small, but I’m worried another season or two will have to undo it all to fit into the larger puzzle.