For various unexpected reasons, I had to spend much of yesterday driving Mrs Bhagpuss around the Cotswolds (Not exactly a hardship on a beautiful summer's day but time-consuming all the same.) and much of today putting together a self-assembly chest of drawers (Chest finished, drawers still a work in progress.) Consequently, I no longer have time to write the post I was planning for today.
Luckily, I have a couple of game-related musical items that shouldn't take too long to stitch together into some kind of a patchwork. Plus I expect I might find something else to bulk things out a bit.
First up, Death Stranding 2, sequel to a critical darling I have never played. I could, though. The Director's Cut of the original game is currently available for free to Prime subscribers on Amazon's cloud gaming platform, Luna. I probably ought to try it. Everyone says it's a must-play.
That's not why I'm writing about it, although one of the two posts I was thinking about doing today was going to be about the Prime Gaming games I picked up earlier in the week. No, this is about the London leg of Kojima Productions "World Strand Tour", a twelve-stop affair in which Hideo Kojima trucks around the globe promoting the new game with live events featuring various special guests.
For the London event the guests were Caroline Polachek and Chvrches, which is some double-bill alright. Caroline performed her song "On The Beach" from the new game and Chvrches did the title track to the first game, which they wrote. There is some shaky phone footage of both, which you can see at this link if you really want to, but I think we'd better have something a bit tidier, one of which is from a different event entirely...
I ought to say, I don't really much like either of those. The Chvrches one is a decent song but not really my kind of thing and other has very little in it of what I usually enjoy in Caroline Polachek's work, namely dance rhythms and beats. This is my problem with most game music in a nutshell, really. It exists for a very specific purpose and without that context it rarely makes much sense. Or not to me, anyway.
That problem doesn't really affect this next one because what Pickle Darling has done is take the music they've made and turned it into game music for a game they've also made. The result is good music, a good game and some game music that frankly I didn't really pay much attention to, although it was fine in the background while I was playing. I'm not a big 8-bit fan though.
Here's one of the songs in its original context.
Massive Everything - Pickle Darling
And here's a screenshot from the game, which you can play at itch.io here. No download required.
Let's have one more from Pickle before we go.
Human Bean Instruction Manual
And finally, just because it seems to be badly-filmed, hard-to-listen-to video day, here's an absolute dream of a guest artist/cover that you can barely hear. Lana del Rey is on a stadium tour just now, which sounds like a fan-fic fantasy until you realise it's actually happening.
Last night she played Wembley Stadium and she brought out Addison Rae for couple of songs. They dueted on Lana's as-yet unreleased 57.5 and on Addison's brealthrough hit from last year, Diet Pepsi.
There's really so much to say about that. As many of them have gone on to acknowledge, Lana changed the rules for female singers in pop music and her influence is absolutely everywhere now. When I fell in love with her songwriting, pretty much no-one sounded like her; now almost everyone does.
Addison Rae certainly owes her a debt, which may have something to do with both the way her debut album Addison is stirring up a chorus of "Well, I wasn't expecting much but... it's really kinda good...?" reviews and with how big-sisterly Lana is with her. Not to mention why Lana rates Diet Pepsi so highly.
My favorite version of the song is still Blondshell's by a mile but I'd love to hear a studio take from Lana. Or a properly recorded and sound-balanced live version. Do people even do live albums any more?
Of course, bringing out your idols and/or accolytes to duet with you seems to be a big trend just now. It has to be a very special combination to get much attention any more.
Just Like Heaven
Olivia Rodrigo and Robert Smith
That'd do it.
I'd just like to point out that Robert Smith is barely six months younger than me...
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At least he (Robert Smith) can still sing and sound like himself. Some of these older singers just lose that ability. Though I guess that never stopped Frank Sinatra.
ReplyDeleteWhich has me now thinking about The Who, and their 'farewell tour' that is happening this year. I saw their farewell tour twice now. I saw them in 1982 at Shea Stadium in NY and later (1989?) at The Meadowlands in New Jersey. I distinctly remember them both being billed as Farewell Tours but the Internet says that was only the 1920 tour. Anyway Roger Daltry at the Meadowlands was jogging in place as he sang and basically gasping for air the whole time. It was not a great show. I can't imagine what shape they're in 35 years later. They were amazing at Shea Stadium, though.
1920 tour?? What kind of typo is that? I meant the 1982 tour. My brain sometimes...
DeleteI love the idea of The Who playing for a dance-hall full of flappers and Fitzgerald types!
DeleteI saw them only once, on their UK sports stadium tour in 1976, when Moon and Entwhistle were still alive. I think it's the only "stadium" gig I've seen. Huge venues were never my thing and still aren't. I can remember quite a lot about the gig but not all that much about The Who themselves, oddly. They had Little Feat, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and The Outlaws in support, all of whom I remember quite clearly, and two other bands I got there too late to see. I just this minute discovered there's a CD of The Who's performance (Presumably a bootleg...) which I might have to try and get hold of.
I can't imagine the two remaining, very old members are up to putting on much of a show now.
Did your trip to the Cotswolds involve a visit to IKEA? Inquiring minds and all that...
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, the only reason why you couldn't hear Lana and Addison very well was because the fans were going absolutely bonkers. And that's the sort of reaction you want out of your fans when a guest appears, rather than a "Who's THAT??"
And I'll be honest in that Olivia and Robert singing Just Like Heaven took me back to my college years, where I was first truly exposed to The Cure and other Modern Rock bands.
Okay, so you're a decade older than me. Still, there's plenty of similar touchpoints between the two of us. I'm thankful to have known you, man.
Yeah, you can't really hear anything but the audience, who know all the words and want everyone to know about it, which seems to be a thing these days. Not that I have any moral high ground to stand on there - when I was in my teens and twenties I used to scream the words to every song I knew. It's just that I was one of the few doing it so I didn't drown the band out - just ruined the evening for whoever was standing next to me.
DeleteAlso ditto on the thankfulness, although you make it sound like one of us is going somewhere, which I very much hope is not the case...
As far as I know, I'm not going anywhere. Just wanted to get that out there, that's all.
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