INSANELY GOOD
"How can a show based on a video game (League of Legends) be this good?" is a question I and other equally mind-blown watchers of the Netflix animated show ARCANE keep coming back to. Audiences don't have to know a thing about League of Legends, the team-based battle game Arcane is spun off from. The show was unmistakably made with great care to every detail; Arcane boasts gorgeous, painterly style animations, masterful storytelling and voice acting, and a cast of believable, real characters. Their trials and triumphs in a world strictly divided by wealth and poverty grab you by the collar and keep your attention until the last second of its nine-episode first season. It's got a killer soundtrack to boot, and season two is, thankfully, already in the works. (CHEY SCOTT)
RAGING WITH THE MACHINE
Florence Welch harnesses more power in the few inches of her vocal chords than us mere mortals possess in our entire beings. She wields this might to full effect on the new FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE single "King." A grand anthem that blends a defiant refusal to be defined merely by her womanly definitions and mythic metaphors, the song instantly feels like it'll be transcendent in an arena or festival setting. Director Autumn de Wilde (who made 2020's criminally underrated Emma.) helms the music video that matches the song's stunning nature, where a witchy and cloaked Welch floats around feral dancers, levitates orchestras, and snaps necks. It's literal king shit. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST
Noteworthy new music arriving in stores and online March 4:
BAND OF HORSES, Things Are Great. We are entering a golden age of sarcastic album titles. Band of Horses contributes to that milieu while bringing some softly swaying indie rock on the band's first LP in five years.
DOLLY PARTON, Run, Rose, Run. The icon's 48th album serves as an audio companion to her new co-authored novel of the same name, which follows an up-and-coming singer-songwriter trying to make it in Nashville. Write what you know, they say.
THE WEATHER STATION, How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars. Fresh on the heels of making one of 2021's best albums (Ignorance), the Weather Station returns with more lush, thoughtful and ultra-composed modern folk tunes. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
