The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, October 21, 2015 — 7A

‘Kingdom’ a gritty 
knock-out drama

One-two punch of 
moving story and 
impressive acting

By BENJAMIN ROSENSTOCK

Daily Arts Writer

First impression quiz: there’s a 

show called “Kingdom” starring 
Disney-turned-“Jealous” 
pop-

star Nick Jonas. 
There’s 
fight-

ing 
involved, 

some 
fam-

ily drama and 
a lot of sweat 
and 
muscles 

popping 
out 

of v-necks. If 
you’re imagin-
ing an amped-
up version of 
“Camp 
Rock” 

with a “Fight Club” theme, I’m 
right there with you.

Thankfully, 
Audience 
Net-

work’s “Kingdom” is a far cry from 
guitar riffs and teenage angst, 
despite Jonas’s presence. There’s a 
different kind of angst at Navy St., 
a mixed martial arts gym in Venice 
Beach — a fighter’s angst, driven 
by a terrifying will to both kill and 
support others.

Ringleader Alvey Kulina (Frank 

Grillo, “Warrior”) owns and runs 
the gym, now expanded since sea-
son one, with the help of his preg-
nant sometimes-girlfriend and 
talented manager, Lise (Kiele San-
chez, “The Purge: Anarchy”), who 
happens to be the ex-fiance of one 
of their best fighters, an ex-convict 
named Ryan (Matt Luria, “Friday 
Night Lights”). Joining Ryan in 
the ring are Alvey’s two sons, Jay 
(Jonathan Tucker, “Texas Chain-
saw Massacre”) and Nate (Nick 
Jonas), who are fighting to win 
their father’s approval and sup-
port their troubled mother, Chris-
tina (Joanna Going, “The Tree of 
Life”), the estranged wife of Alvey 
who is haunted by a drug addiction 
and a past of prostitution.

While Christina works double 

shifts in a lifeless burger joint, 
her sons are paid to fight. Though 
the fighters’ job is destructive by 
definition, it steers them away — 
Jay especially — from even more 
dangerous hobbies, like drugs 

and crime. Their power in the 
ring and in society comes from 
their prestige, a solid record of 
wins over losses in strategically 
arranged matches. But their value 
falls when an opponent backs out 
of a fight, as Jay’s does in the sea-
son two premiere.

When the fight is cancelled, and 

with his pride hurt, Jay furiously 
turns to drinking and cocaine, 
waiving his responsibility to sup-
port his mother’s sobriety by the 
fact that she is working a double 
shift that day. During his drug-
fueled rampage, Jay reveals the 
reality of fighting and what it 
means to him, in Freudian terms. 
Essentially, fighting is an outlet 
for repressed emotions: feelings 
of worthlessness in society, anger 
at his parents and himself, anxiety 
that he isn’t the role model for Nate 
that he wants to be. Jay’s emotions 
are bottled up without this outlet, 
forcing him to abuse drugs and 
alcohol to distract himself. But if 
his fights continue to cancel, Jay’s 
binges will worsen — a risk not 
to only his physical and mental 

health, but to his job status and 
family relationships.

Jay’s dynamic character, as 

both a brutal fighter and ago-
nized son, parallels the show 
itself: where “Kingdom” could 
have strictly been a testosterone-
pumped show about fighting, 
it rounds itself out with deep 
emotions and vulnerability, giv-
ing the characters something to 
fight for and the audience a rea-
son to root for them.

Though the show is domi-

nated by men, set in the overly 
masculine world of physical 
fighting, the women of the show 
are 
equally 
as 
ferocious. 

Though she doesn’t fight her-
self, Lise has an eye for talent in 
the ring and will stop at nothing 
to get who and what she wants. 
Christina, in some ways Lise’s 
counterpart, revels in her inde-
pendence, though it often leads 
to dangerous choices. Joining 
them this season is Alicia Men-
dez (Natalie Martinez, “End of 
Watch”), a talented fighter who 
is recruited by Lise, giving a 
breath of badass girl power to 
the fight ring.

“Kingdom” came into the 

TV ring as an underdog. In the 
midst of family sitcoms and 
high-drama crime powerhous-
es, a small-network show about 
underground fighting that stars 
a teenage heartthrob is ques-
tionable at best. But with a one-
two punch of moving drama and 
impressive acting, “Kingdom” 
might just be a knockout.

A-

Kingdom

Season 2 
Premiere 
Wednesdays 
at 9 p.m.

Audience Network

AUDIENCE NETWORK

“You’re not just a Jonas! You’re a star on the Audience Network!”

‘Lucky Stars’ a bad follow-up

By REGAN DETWILER

Daily Arts Writer

Just two months after their 

August 
release 
of 
Depression 

Cherry, the indie-dream-pop duo 
Beach 
House 

announced Oct. 
7 
the 
release 

of Thank Your 
Lucky 
Stars, 

which 
came 

out 
only 
a 

week after the 
announcement, 
the band say-
ing they didn’t 
want to release 
it with a traditional campaign. 
Beach House wanted Thank Your 
Lucky Stars to “simply enter the 
world and exist.” As the a fairly 
sadder conclusion to the simplicity 
Depression Cherry was searching 
for, the newest release does seem 
to, well, simply exist. 

Depression Cherry was a mel-

lowed out Beach House reverting 
to its synth and slide-guitar roots. 
Teen Dream and Bloom have driven 
them into the spotlight in front of 
larger audiences in bigger venues, 
which the band said was taking 
an emotional toll. If they weren’t 
already 
emotional-verging-on-

spiritual, Depression Cherry took 
them beyond the verge. Their state-
ments about the album were exten-
sive and heartfelt, from quotes that 
the band felt “relate to the feeling 
and themes of this record,” to a 
track listing with selected lyrics. 
The music was more mellow than 
most of Teen Dream or Bloom, 
described by the band as “a color, 
a place, a feeling, an energy … that 
describes the place you arrive as 
you move through the endlessly 
varied trips of existence.”

Thank Your Lucky Stars seems 

inextricably linked to the spiri-
tuality of its predecessor. The 
tracks on Depression Cherry 
leave listeners unsure of wheth-
er they’re serene or melancholy, 
serenely melancholy or melan-
cholically serene, and Thank 
Your Lucky Stars exacerbates 
this tension between happiness 
in sadness or sadness in happi-
ness. It actually sways listeners 
closer to simple sadness in sad-
ness with titles like “Elegy to 
the Void.” Written directly after 
but recorded at the same time as 
Depression Cherry, it’s just not 
quite as good.

With more of a gristly electric 

guitar — “gristly” being a relative 
term since this is Beach House 
we’re talking about — its songs 
don’t have quite the same perfectly, 
unassumingly, smoothly and ethe-
really rhythmic quality that tracks 
like “Sparks” have on Depres-
sion Cherry. Instead they reveal a 
harder, choppier, more definitively 
melancholy — but not quite defini-
tively melancholy — side to the 
hopeful emptiness hinted upon in 
its August predecessor.

Just like the larger crowds and 

larger venues yielded by earlier 
albums, Thank Your Lucky Stars 
may remind the group adn their 
listeners that too much of a good 
thing can leave you feeling a bit 
empty — perhaps beautifully, 
ethereally, dreamily and softly 
scintillatingly — but empty none-
theless. Beach House may want 
to wait a while before giving any 
more of their pleasing but emo-
tionally dense material to listen-
ers: let the white-capped wave of 
their latest two releases crash and 
ebb, then a refreshing new rhythm 
may begin again.

B

Thank 
Your Lucky 
Stars

Beach House

Sub Pop

SUB POP

A lot of sweat 
and muscles 
popping out of 

v-necks.

‘Dopamine’ a strong 
debut from BØRNS

By CHRISTIAN KENNEDY

Daily Arts Writer

BØRNS’s debut studio album, 

Dopamine, is a sleeper album 
— at first listen it’s a typical 
indie-pop-rock 
record, 
but 

with increased 
exposure, 
it 

comes into its 
own. Extreme-
ly 
cohesive, 

nearly to the 
point of vast 
similarity, 
Dopamine plays much like an 
indie romance film. It doesn’t 
have an extravagant budget or 
A-list cameos, but at its core, it’s 
a story worth hearing — over 
and over again.

Opener 
“10,000 
Emerald 

Pools,” as the name may suggest, 
feels submersive; between the 
prominent bass line, relaxed lyr-
ics and underlying excitement 
brought through by the elec-
tric guitar and soaring vocals, 
it pulls you in without telling 
you what’s to come. It also sets 
the tone for the album with 
its sweet, romanticized lyrics 
“You’re all I need to breathe … 
all I need is you.”

“Electric Love” is the ridic-

ulously-in-love montage within 
Dopamine’s love story, its shin-
ing moment coming in the pre-
chorus when the instruments 
all but fade out behind the quiet 
lines “and every night my mind 
is running around her / Thun-

der’s getting louder and loud-
er.” “American Money” builds 
its own value within its depth. 
The darkness in the first verse 
yearns for the assurance in its 
denouement “you are my lover 
for life.” And it’s that short jour-
ney that builds to the ecstasy 
of the track’s chorus. Over the 
next two choruses, the money 
only feels greener and the para-
dise sweeter.

Dopamine 
takes 
a 
few 

moments 
to 
experience 
a 

catharsis in slow-burning, non-
descript “The Emotion.” What 
emotion? All of them. It’s not 
sadness or loneliness or empti-
ness or even hopefulness. It’s all 
of these and none of these — it’s 
feeling whatever there is to feel 
and feeling it wholly. The slight 
change in energy between the 
choruses showcases the ephem-
eralness of most emotions in the 
greater picture. But, not long 
after, the euphoric love returns 
on “Past Lives.” Celebrating 
the perfection of fate, a quick 
bassline assisted by a handful 
of synths the track leaves but-
terflies in the stomach and one 
line in listeners’ heads: “Our 
love is deeper than the oceans 
of water.”

Title-track 
“Dopamine” 
is 

clearly the orgasmic, climactic, 
most-intense track on the album 
as told by its heavy production. 
It’s the culmination of this musi-
cal high that is BØRNS and the 
story he crafts throughout the 
LP. It says explicitly what the 

other tracks failed to make as 
painfully obvious as it is. “I 
wanna feel that stream of dopa-
mine … baby can you take away 
my pain.” Because isn’t that one 
the best of a romance? You feel 
ridiculously (maybe even stu-
pidly) happy and that person 
somehow manages to take away 
the pain, whatever it may be. 
Even though ‘Dopamine’ was 
the musical climax, the physical 
sex of the album was saved for 
“Overnight Sensation.” Domi-
nated by keys and percussion, 
the track wants you to know it’s 
about sex, but the physicality 
is rooted so deeply in Garrett 
Borns’ emotions (and the listen-
ers’ for that matter) that it main-
tains its sweetness.

“The Fool” closes the album 

in the same way credits end a 
movie. It’s the “all the hard stuff 
looks like it’s over, let’s dance” 
finale. The slight ’70s grooves, 
light delivery and intermittent 
clapping doesn’t allow listen-
ers to decide its emotion — it 
decides for itself.

Dopamine is one of those 

albums that loses much of its 
artistic depth if it’s never lis-
tened to in its chronological 
entirety. BØRNS’ sound is origi-
nal and, over the album’s 40 
minutes, it deviates within itself 
but never beyond. However, the 
story woven within the tracks 
and just the right amount of 
surprises throughout to keep it 
playing all the way through — 
and possibly all weekend.

INTERSCOPE

Microphone Mouth devastates dozens of lives every year.

A

Dopamine

BØRNS

Interscope

TV REVIEW
ALBUM REVIEW

ALBUM REVIEW

