Release Date: April 13, 2018 Label: Sunday Best Recordings If you look closely at the cover of L.A. Salami’s 2018 album, The City of Bootmakers, you’ll notice that he’s leaning up against a wall of cultural signifiers. Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Paul McCartney, Outkast, The White Stripes, Hunter S. Thompson, Kings of Leon, The Velvet … Continue reading Album Review: L.A. Salami – The City of Bootmakers
Board Game Review: Great Western Trail
PUBLISHED: 2016 DESIGNERS: Alexander Pfister ARTWORK: Andreas Resch PUBLISHER: eggertspiel, Stronghold Games PLAYERS: 2-4 TIME: 75-120+ minutes When I first started playing modern board games, each new box was an exploration that expanded my conception of what a game could be: “You mean players don’t have to be eliminated as we go along?” “You mean … Continue reading Board Game Review: Great Western Trail
Album Review: Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight
Release Date: April 14, 2008 Label: Fat Cat Records This may well be the most difficult album review I’ve ever written. Not because the music is hard to appraise (I’ll tell you straightaway, The Midnight Organ Fight is a brilliant album), but because of how life can sometimes imitate art. When I started writing this, Scott … Continue reading Album Review: Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight
Board Game Review: Mare Nostrum: Empires
PUBLISHED: 2016 DESIGNERS: Serge Laget ARTWORK: Jean-Marie Minguez PUBLISHER: Academy Games, Asyncron PLAYERS: 3-5 TIME: 90-120+ minutes As if it wasn't clear from my reviews thus far, I absolutely adore strategy board games. Whether it's marching my armies around a map or working to build up an economic engine, these games scratch an indelible itch. … Continue reading Board Game Review: Mare Nostrum: Empires
Album Review: Big Thief – Capacity
Release Date: June 9, 2017 Label: Saddle Creek In my last album review, I spent several paragraphs explaining how the details of a person's personal life could be extraneous to analyzing an album. Especially when the details are those sorts of universal emotional travails we all have experienced in one way or another. That kind … Continue reading Album Review: Big Thief – Capacity
Video Game Review: Race the Sun
PC Release Date: August 19, 2013 Developer: Flippfly There is something alluring about the simplicity of racing video games. They are perhaps unique in that they are immediately accessible, yet endlessly engrossing. Drop a person with no video game experience into a racing game and, regardless of their ultimate success, they'll quickly get the gist. … Continue reading Video Game Review: Race the Sun
Album Review: Keaton Henson – Kindly Now
Release Date: September 16, 2016 Label: Play It Again Sam Most reviews accompanying Keaton Henson's recent album, Kindly Now, draw attention to his chronic anxiety and reclusive persona. And by my referencing those references, I've now done the same in my review. Damn it. That wasn't my intention. Including those details in press releases and … Continue reading Album Review: Keaton Henson – Kindly Now
Board Game Review: Twilight Struggle
PUBLISHED: 2005 DESIGNERS: Ananda Gupta & Jason Matthews ARTWORK: Viktor Csete, Rodger B. MacGowan, et al. PUBLISHER: GMT Games PLAYERS: 2 TIME: 180+ minutes The Cold War has proven to be a fertile period from which to draw artistic inspiration. Maybe it's the fact that those who came of age during the conflict's 40-odd years … Continue reading Board Game Review: Twilight Struggle
Album Review: Ólafur Arnalds – Island Songs
Release Date: August 12, 2016 Label: Mercury Classics I enjoyed the process of struggling with how to describe an album so much in my last review, that I decided to tackle another album a bit beyond my grasp. Here we have an instrumental album by Ólafur Arnalds called Island Songs. I'm sure that Dennis, my … Continue reading Album Review: Ólafur Arnalds – Island Songs
Video Game Review: Pinball FX2 – Sorcerer’s Lair & Mars
PC Release Date: May 10, 2013 Lead Designers: Zen Studios I've talked about the concept of mastery in previous video game reviews. Some games are narrative experiences. Some are strategic affairs where your engagement depends upon the level of your competition. And others fall into the class of repetitive tasks just begging to be mastered … Continue reading Video Game Review: Pinball FX2 – Sorcerer’s Lair & Mars