If there’s one place I can always depend on for new music it’s local radio station KEXP. Orca Team is my latest discovery and a relaxing addition to a relatively lazy summer. Restraint is an album from Orca Team, a Seattle three piece that plays jangly surf-pop. “Night Moves” is the song that sparked my interest with it’s dreamy vocals and bouncy instrumentation. The rest of Restraint follows a similar model of reverb drenched guitars with an energetic rhythm section. The results are laid back but quick and punchy.

I’ve always been a fan of albums that can get their point across with a short runtime, so you know I was pleased when I saw Restraint’s 26 minute duration. The album’s brevity well complements the band’s style, but I still have one complaint. I like dreamy surf pop as much as the next guy, but after awhile it begins to feel redundant. Every song seems to incorporate the exact same effects, song structure, and mood. Just once I’d like to hear two songs that sound completely different. I appreciate that Orca Team has established a sound, but mix it up on a few tracks.

Nonetheless, I’m glad I found this album. It’s calming melodies and jazzy rhythm make up for it’s lack of variation. I’m not really sure what else to say about Orca Team considering they’re still very much in the infancy of their music career. I wish them the best in finding some notoriety outside of the Seattle scene and hope to hear from them again someday.

Favorite Tracks: “Michael”, “Night Moves”, “Ocean Ghost”

Back in 2009 when Passion Pit released their first album, they were a group that I certainly saw the appeal of, but nonetheless couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of reservations towards.  Armed with an unending supply of catchy synth riffs and sing-along vocals that were always aiming for the rafters, they seemed a little more preoccupied with getting everybody to dance than making anything resembling art, and for that I liked ’em but never loved ’em.  In the three years since Manners, Passion Pit has certainly gotten huger commercially, but a lot of the band’s notoriety as of late has come from the mental health issues of frontman Michael Angelakos, but with that turmoil has come a certain amount of emotional depth to Passion Pit’s predominantly sugary sound.

The album starts with “Take A Walk”, a song that seems to have become Gossamer‘s big hit so far, mostly thanks to its monster synth riff.  However, the song’s a bit of a misnomer, as it feels more like a track from their first album and doesn’t really reflect the bittersweet nature of Gossamer.  And bittersweet I think is probably a pretty good way of describing the album, since even though it seems that a lot of critics have talked about the more insular and emotionally messy nature of Gossamer, I think a lot of that is just people reading too much into Angelakos’ personal life.  Because honestly a lot of this album is filled with much of the same wide-eyed grandeur that has made Passion Pit such an irresistable slice of electro-infused pop-rock, only this time there’s a tad more doubt and heartbreak thrown into the mix.

And I guess those songs that unabashedly go for that huge pop sound mixed with a dash of meloncholy are the ones that I’ve gravitated towards the most.  “On My Way” is probably the track I’ve grown to like the most for that reason, as well as “Love Is Greed”, whose title and lyrics are about as self-obsessed as the melodies are lovely.  It’s definitely an album where some songs utilize this approach better than others, which makes it hard for me to continue to look at these guys as more than just a “singles band”, but either way Gossamer proves that Passion Pit are a band that still deserves the success they’ve had, if not the baggage that comes with it.

Favorite Tracks: “I’ll Be Alright”, “On My Way”, “Love Is Greed”

Do you still care about Rock Band? Probably not, only the addicts and the hardcore are still jamming these days. Hell, even Viacom decided it cared so little about the series it let Harmonix go. That was before Dance Central became the one universally acclaimed Kinect series, of course. Perhaps emboldened by that success, or driven by a decline in DLC sales, Harmonix has put out a new entry in the Rock Band series that changes, well, a lot.

Unless you played Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP, or the studio’s first two games, Frequency and Amplitude. Then you’d have a pretty good idea about what Rock Band Blitz is like. It’s an arcadey, singleplayer rhythm game that in many ways is the antithesis to the rest of the series’ home console entries. While Rock Band proper is all about simulating a musical experience, Blitz focuses on being a game-ass game, with high score competitions as its focal point. Let me explain.

You have all the instrument tracks in front of you – drums, bass, guitar, vocals and keyboards – coming at you in the way Rock Band does. The objective is to play all the instruments well enough to increase your multiplier, driving up your score. Tracks never disappear, like they did in Harmonix’s other games like this, but their multipliers do eventually hit a cap. That cap goes up at certain points, depending on how high your lowest multiplier is… You know, this sounds way more confusing than it is in reality. You just hit lots of notes and the numbers go up. There are various power-ups that you can unlock and use, just like Overdrive in Rock Band. Beating songs unlocks more power-ups and increases your credibility. And makes your numbers go up.

A big part of the Rock Band Blitz release is a new Facebook app that I am choosing to ignore. But, since Blitz doesn’t have any mulitplayer, that social aspect is pretty important. The game really hits you over the head with leaderboards, there’s one for like, every song. You can issue challenges to friends on specific songs, are just generally try to top the leaderboards, if that’s your thing. This is all predicated on you having friends who still care enough to try to bring their Rock Band music catalogues back to life.

That’s what’s cool about this game, ultimately. I know I’m not the only person who’s sunk hundreds of dollars into DLC for this series, and it’s great to get to use it all again, so long after the party has died. Whoever came up with the science that turned every song into something that’s fun to play with just two buttons is a genius. The game even comes with 25 new songs that export into Rock Band 3, making this a crazy good deal – if you like at least eight songs on the soundtrack, then Blitz pays for itself.

That said, even if you have never bought a single piece of Rock Band DLC, this is still a game worth checking out. Everyone knows by now whether they like playing with tiny plastic instruments, but this style of rhythm game is much less known. That Harmonix has found ways to make it feel more arcadey and intense is awesome, those damn leaderboards kept me playing much longer than I did with Unplugged. And, if you like it, there’s plenty more music out there for you to get. Those devious bastards.

On July 15th, 2012, Sean, my brother Paul, and myself waited alongside thousands of people outside Seattle’s Pike Place Market to see Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. It was advertised as a promotional event where Ferrell and Galifianakis would serve coffee to fans. Waiting for hours in the scorching hot sun, Ferrell and Galifianakis only stuck around for about 20 minutes and then left, serving a whopping 25 out of literally thousands of people. It hurt, but there’s no better cure than laughter and The Campaign has filled that coffee-less void of disappointment.

Comedy Heavyweight Will Ferrell plays Cam Brady, a dimwitted yet beloved North Carolina congressman running for his fifth term unopposed. Meanwhile, corrupt businessmen Glen (John Lithgow) and Wade Motch (Dan Aykroyd) look for an opening to find a candidate to oppose Brady so that they can “insource” Chinese industry into North Carolina. After one of Brady’s sexually explicit phone messages gets out the Motch brothers strike and select Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis) as their unwitting mealticket. Huggins is a sugary sweet yet blissfully ignorant family man that provides a nice contrast to the more crass Cam Brady. What follows is a series of embarrassing media misfires, sexual controversies, and injured babies.

This is actually the third political themed movie from director Jay Roach after Recount and this year’s Game Change. But unlike those two films this is probably a little less insightful. The Campaign is not so much a biting political satire as it’s eighty-something minutes of two socially inept man-boys spouting out potty humor. Some of it works, some if it doesn’t, but nonetheless it’s entertaining. The only thing I could do without are the boring expositional scenes from the film’s stock villains. I’m not entirely sure what Aykroyd and Lithgow are even doing in this movie, aside from picking up a paycheck. A much more interesting villain comes in the form of sneaky campaign manager Tim Wattley played by Dylan McDermott (also the name of character Bryan Cranston played on Seinfeld). Then again this movie isn’t really about the villains, it’s about Ferrell and Galifiankis.

Zach Galifianakis is still fairly new to mainstream audiences but continues to make a case for being a comedy star. His characters have a certain childlike innocence to them that make them hard not to love and he’s a surprisingly rounded actor (no pun intended). As for Ferrell what can I say? As far as I’m concerned he’s never given a bad performance. That’s not to say he’s never been in a bad movie, but I’ve never seen him give any less than 110%. Together they work well and in-turn provide plenty of ridiculously idiotic exchanges for a summer crowd wanting to laugh.

There’s no need to rush out and see The Campaign as it is a fairly by the numbers comedy. The fact that’s it’s R rated gives it a wide range of comedy ammunition, but not all of the jokes hit their mark. Though if you’ve ever liked either Ferrell or Galifianakis I think you’ll vote in favor of The Campaign… Just don’t depend on either of the two to make you a Grande No-Whip Nonfat Mocha.