The Sea and Cake- One Bedroom

 Album titles can serve many purposes, including no purpose at all. Some bands barely seem to try at all with titles while others seem to be playing a meta game with their fans to see if they get the reference or intent behind it. Among album title tropes, I tend to be simultaneously the most and least interested in self-titled ones. I say least because it’s…merely the band’s name, and nothing more. Not much to discuss or interpret there. Yet in saying they’re “merely” the band’s name, this is both true and false, because if it’s not their debut album, a band using an eponymous title is often communicating something to their audience. This is why I had just said it’s also the most interesting trope to me.

While we’ll always know it as The White Album, the Beatles seemingly intended it to be self-titled, so you’ll sometimes see it referred to as The Beatles. Now, of course the better known trope associated with The White Album is a band doing a double album to stretch out and do a wider variety of music than normal. At least, when I hear people say a record is a band’s “White Album” I take it to mean that. Yet there’s another trope to the phenomenon of a self-titled album arriving several years into a band’s history, and that’s coming at a point in the band’s career when they’re changing their sound, changing members significantly, or otherwise trying to say “this is who we are as a band. It’s not a concept album or a tone piece or about a certain topic. It’s us.”

I bring all this up to say, despite it neither being a double album nor self-titled, One Bedroom by The Sea and Cake has often felt like it should be self-titled. It’s always been amongst my least favorite records by them, though I’ve come to appreciate (slightly) more its odds-and-sods approach to song variety. I mean, ‘Sound & Vision’ is the one cover, ever, the band has released, and it not only ends the album but it’s a lighthearted and fun moment for a band who, despite being always labelled as mellow/chill/relaxing/airy, have ironically never really felt FUN on any other track they’ve made. The rest of the album adds to this mixed feeling, with tracks either being standouts that are career highs—‘Mr. F’ has a circular chorus that sticks in the memory, and the lengthy jammy intro of ‘Four Corners’ that opens the record is a classic Sea and Cake groove—or they’re missteps that water the album down with what should have been b-sides. In particular the middle of One Bedroom always sags for me, and despite this album being just under 40 minutes it has that same issue Stereolab’s Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night does where it’s not a bad album by any means, there’s just a couple too many songs and the pacing is fitful. Which gets me to thinking this might have been a better EP than an album.

Given that this record followed Oui after 3 years, and their next record wouldn’t come out for another 4, it’s strange that One Bedroom feels so undercooked and rushed. It’s one of those releases I’ve always wanted to take a crack at changing the track order to see if I can make it either flow better or be more enjoyable. As a result of all of this the record is one that almost punishes close listening; I’m sure you might know what I mean when I say, not in an ambient music kind of way, but certain albums are more agreeable as background noise to another activity instead of listening intently to it. I’ve gone for walks or sat on the porch drinking beer to Oui and it is brilliant and rewards such close listening. One Bedroom, as its name suggests, always sounded best to me when I was doing homework in my bedroom when I was in school or otherwise focused on something else (reading, videogames, petting cats, etc).

Still, let’s consider the actual work. What One Bedroom reminds me of is when you buy a variety pack of beer or chips or something, and you get to the end of the pack and your least favorite things are the only ones left. “Well, I don’t hate this chocolate stout, but I don’t love it…” you think to yourself. That’s One Bedroom: the least good thing in a group of superior things. If Runner is the album for driving through a city, and Oui is for Summer afternoons with the windows open and a nice breeze going, then One Bedroom is for doing homework, certainly literally as I said before, but perhaps figuratively as you separate the wheat from the chaff in its tracklisting.

On a final note, I don’t give out scores for my reviews anymore, though in this case because my feelings about One Bedroom are difficult to qualify, it may help to quantify them with a number. In the distant past I used a 5 star rating system for my reviews and it always seemed to be the sticking point with the few people who would comment on this blog, so eventually I dropped it entirely, mostly because it seemed unnecessary in the age of streaming and nearly-limitless access to music. By which I mean, you can go listen to this album in multiple places before you consider “spending money” on it, so giving Consumer Reports style ratings feels asinine. Yet One Bedroom sort of perfectly encapsulates what I think of as a 3 star out of 5 album. It is absolutely a 3 out of 5 record, though don’t take this as based on the fact I described the album much earlier in this review as “odds-and-sods.” Not every album that has a handful of weak tracks is automatically either a 3, or even couldn’t achieve a 5. No, One Bedroom would earn this rating because I think fans of the band would probably enjoy this, while at the same time, I would never tell a newcomer to start here.

 

Unedited thoughts on Physical Media Resurgence & Backlogs & Media Access & Self-Control

 I’ve been seeing more and more videos of people younger than me doing self imposed challenges where they don’t use social media for X amount of time, or limit their media consumption to just a few things for a month, or spending a year tackling their backlog of movies/videogames/etc. And it’s interesting seeing people live in the way a lot of people HAD to in the 90s and earlier. I was just thinking recently about how I have more, and more easy access, to videogames than when I was in say 8^th grade, where unless you borrowed a game from someone or rented it, you just had the games you had to play, and nothing else. Same with CDs: I remember when I finally owned more CDs than my 15 disc CD wallet could hold, and how it felt like I had SO MUCH music, whereas now I can open Spotify and have access to thousands upon thousands of albums and songs.

At the same time, I see comments on social media about how people miss videostores and that whole experience. Of course they forget the inconvenience and limited stock and the other downsides that were the reason videostores went away, but perhaps in some way the limited stock is a desirable trait.

Anyway, all of this has me thinking it’s not a black and white issue like it’s portrayed as. When I was in 8^th grade, I would’ve given anything to have access to media like I do now. And this isn’t even a matter of we’ve been spoiled for so long we don’t appreciate what we have; I, at least, always appreciate the convenience of the Internet and nearly-limitless access to information and entertainment. So this whole topic doesn’t to me boil down to “limited media access” vs. “unlimited media access” and which one is better. As with anything, the truth is more complicated and nuanced. Yet ultimately this can be boiled down to self-control. If you can’t stop yourself from endlessly scrolling TikTok all day and checking Reddit every 20 minutes, no amount of self-imposed challenges will permanently alter your behavior. As soon as the week or month or whatever length of time the challenge lasts, I would bet dollars to donuts that most of those people eventually slide back into their old habits. YOU must control your consumption. YOU must learn the balance of mindless content vs. meaningful content you need in your life. YOU must learn to put your phone down and sit down to concentrate on an album or book wholly. But that’s not as simple and sexy as a clickbait title that screams “I lived like someone in the 80s for a week!”

So let’s do a little thought experiment. If you go to your local used media store and buy a DVD boxset of, say, The Office, and this is in your selection of physical media you’re “allowed” to watch during your self-imposed challenge. So on the first day of it, you begin watching season one of The Office on DVD. Outside of the interface and having to physically change the discs as the seasons go on, there is no fundamental difference between the two ways of watching. You could just as easily have used your self-control to say, “I’m going to put my phone down and watch the first 6 episodes of The Office on streaming.”

Ultimately you can use whatever methods or systems proposed by YouTubers and others to enjoy as much media as possible and not waste your life on social media and mindless content churn websites. But you still have to have the self-control to stick with these methods or systems, and this ultimately is what makes them a novelty rather than a paradigm shift: you are ultimately responsible for yourself. It’s always within your power to decrease your social media time and increase time spent reading or watching new TV shows or whatever.

I do think the one valuable thing people are taking from this whole topic is getting back into physical media and as a result having real ownership of media again. While I still maintain there’s a balance to find between being all physical media and all streaming, I can’t deny that with the former the movie studio can’t come into your house and steal your bluray copy of The Princess Bride.

My own system for say music is that I curate a collection of vinyl records of my absolutely favorites and rare releases you can’t always find on streaming, but I also use streaming all the time because of the ease of use and the amount of music you get for that monthly fee. Similarly with movies, I only buy a physical copy of something if I especially love it OR if it’s an obscure movie that might go out of print—it’s been re-released recently, but for a long time you couldn’t watch Dogma on any streaming services and had to track down a DVD copy, for instance.

Now as for backlogs…I think this is also about self-control, but additionally about having honest conversations with yourself. We all know that sometimes we purchase things because we’d like to think of ourselves as the kind of person who casually decides to read One Hundred Years Of Solitude but realistically most of us will stop at the purchase/acquisition. This is why so many people have dozens of games in their Steam library they haven’t touched. You WANT to be the kind of person who plays in-depth strategy games or esoteric RPGs with dense mechanics, so you buy those games, yet you never end up playing them. You can use whatever systems or self-imposed challenges you want, ultimately you have to make yourself accountable and actually play them. I have this thing where, when I’m between videogames, I play an hour or two of a few different games I’ve bought but haven’t played. This gets me to rapidly reassign games in my own ranking: Games I’ll Never Want To Play, Games I Might Want To Play Someday, and Games I Want To Keep Playing After This Is Over.

 

Unedited Thoughts on Edward Hopper

Really the most obvious thing that jumps out to one is the sense of loneliness and solitude and contemplation in Hopper’s paintings. Even when there is no human in the paintings, there is a tremendous sense of the artist or the viewer adding something to the room or landscape by viewing it. Hopper’s works often depict lone humans in different situations, and when we’re able to see their facial expressions, they’re never one of outright happiness. We see person after person in environments made by humans—buildings, cities, offices, movie theaters, homesteads, etc.—and what stands out is how lonely and solitary they feel. Anyone who has ever felt utterly, devastatingly alone in a crowded room can relate.

Rather than pick up on how Hopper’s works influenced things like the liminal art/photography movement, I think it’s worth noting that to me his paintings aren’t about the absence of things or being in an in-between zone/state of being of some sort. Rather when there’s humans they seem resistant to their current situation yet resigned to it. They’re still lost in thought or rumination about their life but their look and auras are of one who has accepted, perhaps capitulated to the situation they’re in, whether it’s an unhappy marriage or a new suddenly unhappy job or a moment or realization you know you can’t do anything about. When there are no human figures, we see ourselves in the landscapes; we feel almost invited in to project our own feelings of loneliness and alienation.

Yet in this last point I find there to be a feeling of mutuality and invitation in Hopper’s works. Even if they make you feel lonely, they also make you aware that other people have felt just like you have, even if the details are technically different. I look at a work like Man Seated On Bed (1906) and Summer Interior (1909) and especially Office In A Small City (1953) and I can see flashes of my own life, and/or people I’ve known, in these snapshots in time. With the latter work we see a common technique of Hopper’s during this mid to late era, where we see a human figure but also a bit of a voyeuristic angle were we see the exterior of the building/setting the human figure is in. Perhaps another way to see it is almost like an omnipotent viewer peering into dollhouses at the tiny lives there.

The emptiness of the cityscapes with one human figure in focus really underscores how many people over the years have felt alienated and alone despite ironically living in large urban environments. Curious then that the last painting I’m riffing off of should specify that it’s portraying a SMALL city. Anyway, I imagine the person in this painting has just sat down for their first day of work, and—peering across the cityscape that at first perhaps is scenic and lovely but will soon become ordinary and repetitive—it dawns on them that this is going to be the next however many years of their life. You are just a cog in the machine of society; welcome home.

Interesting to me that some art critics back in the day tried to associated Hopper’s later works with abstract art/surrealism, I think this is just because of the vaguely dreamlike feeling his later human-less landscapes/cityscapes/roomscapes can have. Certainly you can see Rooms By The Sea (1951) and it can look a bit along the lines of a Renè Magritte b-side, but this is another feeling the viewer brings to the work. If you visually engage with this work you can explain away how the perspective makes it seem like the door opens directly onto water, when in actuality this room may be up on a hill overlooking a body of water, with the POV disguising the steps or slop just outside the door. One could interpret this painting quite simply and just as validly as: the open door to nature brings in water and light, crucial elements to (most) life. While the room in the back has sunlight too, it’s less and fainter than the open door to nature.

Much has been commented on, even by the artist himself, with her focus on light and shadows. I feel this is mirrored in the focus on loneliness/solitude and external forces. By which I mean, even in the landscapes with no human figure, the viewer sort of substitutes in and is made to reflect on their own feelings. The landscape can match your mood or you an allow it to suggest one to you. When there are human figures, even more than one, you still get the sense they are inside themselves and looking outward, rather than imagining how they fit “into” the scene they’re in. For instance, the earlier cited work Summer Interior depicts a woman who is in her environment yet given the arrangement and her state of dress and look, she is also a million miles away from her environment focused on something else. Did she just get divorced? Is she depressed and thinking of the past? Or it is even something good that has her so flustered?

 

Return of The Videogame Solipsist

 An Unedited Rant Medley About The Games I've Been Playing

BattleTech

Randomness absolutely ruins this game for me. I guess Front Mission 3 will continue to be my platonic ideal of a game that actually makes you feel empowered fighting using giant robots instead of like they’re worse, more fragile and finicky versions of tanks.

I wanted to love this game so badly. I gave it far more chances and time than I ordinarily would have. But even on the lowest difficulty I constantly found myself getting bad luck and shitstomped by enemies. No matter how carefully I tried to edge forward on maps, I still kept getting surprised and overwhelmed. The enemy always outnumbers you, and depending on RNG this can either mean 8 to 4 or 20 to 4.

It feels like actually running your own mercenary company in the far future,  including all the unfun business meetings and personnel issues and operating budgets nobody should want to have to do.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: your IP is not popular enough for people to want to play what sounds like a soft reboot minus the The that usually accompanies these.

 

BallxPit

This is the sort of game where the first dozen or so hours are constant fun and progress being made, but you start to realize most of the characters you’re unlocking aren’t fun to play as because of their downsides, and you have to level them up from scratch instead of them being the same level as your current characters. Depending on the level, the character(s) you choose, and the luck you get with power-ups, your runs will either be a cakewalk or a miserable slog that ends in failure, which is not player agency and skill but rather gambling.

The town building aspect? Well, it’s not nearly as deep and fun as it wants you to think it is. Shooting workers to bounce around and collect resources is fine, but having to finish building structures by also bouncing them off? That’s not a fun and meaningful mechanic, it just feels like dull busywork.

There’s still a lot for me to unlock in this game yet after almost 36 hours I’m not sure I care anymore. This game is a classic example of one that a decade ago would’ve been a mobile game that purposefully slows your progress to get you to spend money; instead it’s just a game that starts to feel like a checklist or homework because it takes so much time to make any real progress.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: why invoke ballpits if your game gets boring far quicker than ballpits do?

 

Vampire Survivors

Just go play this game if you haven’t already. There’s a reason it’s so beloved and so addictive. Every couple play sessions I kept unlocking new aspects and mechanics, and the drip feed of unlocks and new weapons/items is pitch perfect.

I’ve also been playing quite a bit of co-op with my wife, and that’s a lot of fun, too. You trade off on level up’s, but you occasionally can choose to give both of you a random weapon upgrade.

This game could’ve been used for evil. Designed by a former casino slot machine designer, this could’ve been an addictive and predatory mobile game. Instead it’s all the fun of the first few hours with a mobile game before you hit the wall, but it’s that feeling throughout your time playing it.

I kept telling myself, as I tried the other games I’m talking about in this post, that I was finally done with Vampire Survivors, I was getting bored of the gameplay loop and I was seeing the game when I closed my eyes, yet I kept coming back to it. It’s like cigarettes that don’t kill you.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: ummm is this a reference to how you never fight vampires, so they’re the survivors, or am I surviving vampires by never fighting them?

 

XCom 2

I’m so glad I only paid $5 for this on a Steam sale, because that’s exactly how much fun I got out of it.

I loved the first modern XCom from like 2011(?). There was a younger version of me that could put up with, even enjoy, the constant stressful decision making and feeling like the underdog constantly. The RNG didn’t even bug me that much.

But playing the sequel, I couldn’t shake the feeling, “oh, I’ve done this before, it just looks shinier now.”

I lost my will to continue during one of the terror missions where you have to rescue civilians. I do get that these missions are supposed to be stressful and a big difficulty spike—but even playing on the easiest difficulty, I could not get through them for the life of me. I either was too reckless in trying to protect the civilians and got my soldiers killed, or I didn’t rush enough and lost too many civilians for the “rewards” after the mission to be worth it.

I say this as someone who loves Dark Souls: intentionally making a game difficult is not always fun. I would love to play a XCom game where I feel like I can play well and in a way where I don’t have to constantly feel like there’s no objectively best option to choose, that in getting one cool weapon or soldier I am losing the opportunity for something equally cool at the same time.

Also, fuck RNG. You need to sculpt RNG in games like this so if my soldier is shooting at an alien monstrosity construct nega beast from five fucking feet away they can’t miss. A 90% hit rating should actually feel like it will hit 9 times out of 10, instead of 3 times out of 10.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: XCom? More like hex dumb. Yeah that’s the best I could do.

 

Divinity Original Sin 2

The opening of a game, ideally, should grab you and within an hour show you something fun or cool or interesting that hooks you. This game feels like actually playing a tabletop RPG with friends, and while that may interest a lot of you out there, I would rather just do that in real life instead of with a clunky, slow moving isometric RPG with way too many status effects and a glacial, unexciting combat system. I don’t even dislike turn based RPGs, it’s not that, it’s something about this game and the way it’s presented.

I ended up initiating a fight because some lizard cocksucker insulted me, and then all hell broke loose. I somehow got killed but at the same time triggered the next story event and ended up getting trapped inside the ship because I couldn’t figure out who had the key to open the door to let me outside.

Here’s hoping Baldur’s Gate 3 is better. Baldur’s Gate 1 had a more compelling opening stretch….

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: the only thing original about this game is how fast I stopped playing it.

 

Into The Breach

Oh, look, another turn based strategy game where you control giant robots but you feel disempowered and are always a step behind the enemies in terms of numbers and lethality.

I know a lot of people love this game but it’s not for me. If it was being honest, it would describe itself as a puzzle game more than a turn based strategy game. I always felt like if I was making the exact perfect moves and actions each turn, I was being punished. At that point I’ll just watch someone else play it.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: I’m putting Into The Breach, Out Of My Reach.

 

Skyrim

I am proud to say I’ve only bought this game twice: back on release for the PS3, and on PC this past Fall.

Much like the first time, I put a lot of playtime into it but got nowhere near finishing it other than a couple major sidequests and a couple dozen shorter ones. I killed giants and dragons, I bought a house, and I saved my game and killed everyone in towns  a few times.

What else can you say about this game? It both does and doesn’t hold up, because that’s every important/popular Bethesda release.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: Yes I know technically it should have The Elder Scrolls but the series name and the item itself both suck and are the least interesting parts.

 

Shadowrun Returns

I apparently bought this game and played about two hours of it. I remember nothing about this experience. I was probably crossfaded, which leads me to believe it’s not a very fun or interesting game because normally I am more forgiving in that state. I think I did one or two fights and they were clunky and boring looking.

In the era of dynamic looking turn based RPGs like Persona 5 and Fire Emblem: Three Houses, there is no excuse for a game to look this boring during fights. It’s literally as visually engaging as the very first Fallout, a game that gets a pass because it’s otherwise a masterpiece, and it came out in 1997. Actually Final Fantasy VII came out then, didn’t it, and that had cool looking attacks and a dynamic camera…

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: no thanks, you can go back to being gone.