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