Cascadia Calling, 2026.5.5
"if that river was whiskey and I was a divin' duck / I would dive to the bottom, never would I come up"
We’re setting temperature records in Seattle. It feels strange to comment every time we have a too-warm spring or summer, but I find it hard not to. There’s something sinister about every new record temperature and about spring days that feel like the height of summer.
I walked through Belltown yesterday and tried to stick to the shade as much as possible. Despite growing up in the desert, I’m averse to heat. I grabbed lunch at the taco truck that parks near Westlake Center. There are still protests there, despite Westlake Park being closed for construction. Some folks milled about with signs, sandwiched in between two sets of chain-link fencing. Someone with a loud speaker asked for volunteers to pass out fliers.
“Any idea what they’re protesting?” I asked the guy in the taco truck when he handed me my order.
“No idea, sorry man.” He said. “Oh, uh, by the way, we’re here every Monday.” He had the energy of someone who had been told to make sure to tell customers that the truck was there every Monday.
“Oh cool. I’ll definitely be back.” I said. It was a pretty good burrito, so I probably didn’t lie to the guy.
The new Black Keys album, Peaches!, feels like one they made just for themselves. This also means it’s my favorite album they’ve released in years. It’s album of covers of old blues classics, each performed with the fuzzy, mumbling blues rock style that the band has evolved on and orbited around for their entire career. In a way, despite being entirely covers, it’s the most true the Black Keys have sounded to themselves since the early 2000s.
It’s stripped down and essentialist with the blues progressions, wailing solos, and shuffling drums being the prime building blocks that are used on every track on the album. This vibe is most in evidence on their version of Jessie Mae Hemphill’s “Tell Me You Love Me”. Their version meanders into existence, as if they both happened to decide to play the same song at the same time and it just fell together. It builds to a joyous, busy version of the stripped-down blues track.
The standout track for me is their version of Arthur Crudup’s “Who’s Been Fooling You”. From the slinky, dragging guitar intro to the clattering outro it’s an affectionate cover of one of the all-time great blues tracks. It’s clear that the Black Keys are committing the track to tape because they are enamored with it and they are having a fun time playing it with one another. The joy comes through in the recording, as does the deep influence that Crudup’s music has had on them.
The album also serves as a great entry point into the sound of the Black Keys. If you want to understand the appeal of the band, hearing them as fully mature musicians playing loving covers of blues tunes they clearly care about is a great way to go about it. The Black Keys have never been shy about including covers on their albums, but Peaches! feels like an open-hearted love letter to the artists and songs that inspired them and helped make them musicians in the first place.
Like pretty much anyone else who plays video games, I too, have played Pragmata. Apparently there was some discourse about it, but I’ve done a good enough job of being offline that I only heard it second hand from the excellent Kill the Computer podcast.
The game itself is pure Capcom. The gameplay is smooth, but frenetic. The action and plot are essentially on rails, with minimal sidetracking or exploration. What side areas are available to explore feel less like an open world and more like optional puzzles bolted on to the main path of the game. There are, of course, time trials and challenges and any number of collectibles to collect, but these don’t impact the core gameplay or plot. Your reward for having collected 15 little warbling “mini-cabin” figures appears to be that you have collected 15 mascots that sit in the hub area.
The plot itself was predictable and not particularly compelling. Each “surprise” plot beat is obvious far in advance. The two main characters, despite spending a significant amount of time talking to each other, both feel flat. Most of the conversations seem to be gruff-but-lovable Hugh explaining basic concepts to naif Diana, to which she responds with unbridled enthusiasm. Aside from the two main characters, the world-building is competently done, in particular the portrayal of a high-tech moonbase as a dull and irritating work environment right up until robots killed everyone.
The figure of Diana, the robot child sidekick, has gotten a lot of press. She’s a classic guileless, new-to-the-world robot character, but written to be an annoying, precocious 8 year old. Imagine Schwarzenegger’s terminator from Terminator 2 but in the body of a the most energetic kid at your local Montessori. I found her equal parts irritating and endearing, which is a compliment to her writers and voice actor, since that’s how I find most kids her age.
Ultimately, Pragmata is a decent, smooth-playing action game that is trying to be a survival horror game. Dead Space but make it Megaman, essentially. It never quite succeeds at the task it was given. The personal stakes never feel real while playing it. I never had to make a hard decision about how I played the game. The plot was formulaic and the characters managed to feel thin despite lots of chattering. I’m glad I played it, but I don’t expect I’ll ever pick it up again in the future. Unless you are a massive fan of Capcom action games or precocious, amnesiac children, I’d say you’re safe skipping it.