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