2020 & 2021 Media retrospective

At the end of every year, I try to do a bit of a media retrospective of my favorite stuff that came out that year. I neglected to do one last year, what with all the things going on. But, some good art has happened over the last two years. Particularly music, in my opinion, which was originally all I was going to stuff into this post. But, I opted to add video games and movies to the mix. I may also do a post about comics in the future, probably less specific to 2020-21 and more just… things I’ve read in the past couple of years. I rarely read books that aren’t comics these days, but I have to put in a good word for Rosemary Mosco’s A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, a beautifully illustrated guide to an underappreciated bird. Aaron Reed’s Subcutanean was also interesting, a procedurally generated horror novel. I’m hoping to write a bit about this and gimmick in general in the future. I’m sure I’ve missed plenty in this post. Particularly with film, I’m sure I watched more than one movie that was made in 2020 that I didn’t hate, but looking through release lists, I can’t even find stuff that I did hate. And of course… the last few years have done a lot to the ol’ memory. Anyway, here’s some stuff I appreciated from the past couple of years. I’ve been struggling to finish this for a month or so… to that end, note that none of this is in any particular order. Next post should be more interesting.

Music

Bacchae – Pleasure Vision (2020)
I keep putting off publishing this post because I can’t really think of what this album reminds me of. It rings a distinct vibe with me, but I can’t quite place it. In a sort of post-hardcore vein, I suppose. Absolutely stunning album, though, that I’ve been listening to… near-daily? I don’t know, a lot.
We are the Union – Ordinary Life (2021)
Trans ska! Coming out album for frontwoman Reade. Lot of feels here, but even if there weren’t, it’s just a great album. Great time for ska, not really something I’d predicted for the early 2020s. ‘Morbid Obsessions’ was a track that really hit hard for me on this one, and it has a banger of a video.
Kero Kero Bonito – Civilisation (2021)
I love KKB’s earlier work, but I’d largely call it fairly simple pop music. Clever lyrics, and a lot of fun. Civilisation, which joins together two EPs, is less fun and far more complicated. Some wild rhythmic structures in an album that lyrically is a sort of vaguely optimistic look at the rather frightening state of everything. I’ve listened to this album a lot. Lovely animated video for ‘The Princess and the Clock’.
Sevdaliza – Shabrang (2020)
Sevdaliza has sort of a trip-hoppy vibe? And this sophomore album feels a bit more consistently produced to me than her earlier material. Not that her early stuff was bad, but this feels more like an album, and it’s a beautiful listen start to finish.
Catbite – Nice One (2021)
This excellent woman-fronted ska band released a short album a few years back, and then re-recorded it twice in two completely different styles. Now they’re back with this somewhat longer album, and it’s gold all the way down. ‘Call Your Bluff’ is a favorite off this one.
June Jones – Leafcutter (2021)
This album is real gay! I dunno, it’s just sort of indie pop stuff, lyrically beautiful with a hint of melancholy to the delivery. June has a beautiful, haunting voice.
Rural Internet – BREAKING UP (2021)
Queer hyperpop hip-hop type stuff, incredibly chaotic from start to finish. Rural Internet released a second album in 2021 and it’s excellent as well. But BREAKING UP just has a really special structure to it, and an incredible way of communicating energy.
Hayley Kiyoko – I’m Too Sensitive for This Shit (2020)
At some point in 2021, I went to see what Hayley Kiyoko was up to and stumbled across a streamed performance she did for SF Pride 2020. This was the first time I heard the track ‘She’ from I’m Too Sensitive for This Shit, and I bawled my eyes out. The rest of the EP is great; the opener, ‘Demons’, has some great Circus-era Britney vibes. But, y’know, gayer.
Hachiku – I’ll Probably be Asleep (2020)
Oof, just beautiful, heart-wrenching bedroom pop. ‘Shark Attack’ is likely the only time I’ve heard an artist clarify that a song is about their late dog and not oral sex. So, you know, lyrically there’s a bit of tender ambiguity to chew on.

Video games

Calico (2020)
Game set in a magical little town where you run a cat café. You can make a bunch of animals follow you around including cats, cool birds, and capybaras. You can make the animals big or small. Honestly, that’s all you need to know.
Doom 64 (1997, 2020 rerelease)
Ordinarily I wouldn’t count a rerelease, but this is the first time Doom 64 has been ported to something more modern than an N64. I expected it to just be More Doom, but I was surprised by how puzzly it was. I really enjoyed the level design in this game.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)
The face that this only came out in 2020 is really telling me how much the pandemic has distorted my sense of time. I’d only really played Pocket Camp before, and it was a fun time but I fell out of it. I can’t really assess New Horizons as a game, I can’t really detach it from the work-from-home pandemic experience. I will say that there are lots of good outfits, and games that offer me a dollhouse experience are incredibly important to me. I’ll also say that the museum is a beautiful video game space, particularly the butterfly room and the aquarium portion.
Monster Train (2020)
Deck-builder, somewhat in the vein of Slay the Spire, but with a tower defense type twist. There’s a lot of depth here, and the builds can get incredibly silly. A lot of different strategies to play with as you’re always controlling essentially both a primary and secondary class.
Good Job! (2020)
Really fun physics puzzler. It’s one of those games where a lot of the fun comes from how absolutely chaotically you can just wreck shop.
Röki (2020)
Emotional adventure game with a great sense of space and a compelling story. Lots of sweet monsters. Some less sweet monsters. Simple but enjoyable puzzles.
Manifold Garden (2020)
I played this one pretty recently, as I had been waiting on a physical edition. This was one of those games that kind of ruined other games for me for a while. I’ve mostly fallen out of first-person games, but a good first-person puzzler in the vein of _Superliminal_… I’m all in. The gimmick here is that you can shift gravity to an adjacent wall that you’re near. Great stuff, and a visual treat.
Carto (2020)
Top-down adventure game where the gimmick is that you rearrange the map, Carcassone-style. Really cool game, I loved playing with this mechanic.
Disc Room (2020)
This is one of those games that works because losing is so unpunishing. Aside from being integral to progression in the game, the bullet-hell-esque rooms are quick whether you succeed or fail, and your next attempt is completely frictionless. Good soundtrack, I grabbed it on saw-shaped vinyl.
Tetris Effect: Connected (2020)
I already posted about this, but I’m more and more convinced that whether you want to play Journey mode or a classic Marathon, this is the best Tetris to date. Obviously, Tetris Effect is older, so I’ll say something specific to Connected that I didn’t mention in that post: the 4-player coöp boss fight mode where you end up merging everyone’s playfield together into one massive 40x20 board? It whips.
Slipways (2021)
Very puzzly resource-management/construction type game. The core premise is simple, building trade connections between nearby planets. The puzzle is in managing what planets to connect such that you’re producing enough to keep expanding in the same way. Bit hard to describe, that didn’t really do it justice. Incredibly brain-burny though.
Super Mario Bros. 35 (2020)
I wrote about this, and I’m still bitter about Nintendo’s ephemeral approach to this brilliant concept. Don’t have much more to say about it, and it’s pointless anyway since nobody can play it now.
Chicory: A Colorful Tale (2021)
Made me cry, so that’s a good start. Very emotional game from the folks who did Wandersong, a game I discussed in my 2019 retrospective. Top-down adventure game where you’re restoring color to a world devoid of it. You can basically paint anything and just sort of… have a lot of fun with the world while you’re playing the game. Very good difficulty/accessibility options. Lena Raine did the soundtrack, and it’s evocative in that way that I find unique to Lena’s work.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (2021)
Short top-down adventure game where you help Turnip Boy commit tax evasion. Cute, lot of fun little interactions.
Boyfriend Dungeon (2021)
This game had some issues; I’m not going to argue with the handful of valid criticisms that circled the well of social media for a week or so after it was released. Personally, I felt a bit put-off by the fact that there were only two dungeons. I don’t like to complain about game length, but two just felt incomplete. At any rate, I liked what this game did. Dungeon crawling dating sim is 100% my jam.
Beast Breaker (2021)
Launch your cute little mouse friend around a battlefield, ball-physics style, to blast through big ol’ critters. Lots of charming characters, neat weapon builds, and the story goes on for quite some time. Great pick-up-and-play-a-level sort of game.

Film

In the Earth (2021)
Brilliant sort of supernatural, psychedelic horror. Lovely synth soundtrack. Does the Close Encounters of the Third Kind communicating via cool synths thing. Colorful and visually intriguing including sequences by Cyriak. Lots of flashing, watch out for that.
Clifford the Big Red Dog (2021)
It was just fun. The dog is very big, and he looks pretty rough. There’s a part (spoiler alert?) where everyone’s trying to get rid of him because he’s too big, and he tries to make himself small! It’s wild. I wouldn’t call it good, but I had a blast with it.
Lamb (2021)
Slightly spooky drama about some folks in Iceland who have a run-in with a sheep demon of some sort and end up raising a half-sheep/half-human son. I don’t think any of my friends liked it as much as I did, but it was touching and slow in the way that I enjoy.
The Matrix: Resurrections (2021)
I’ve never been huge on the Matrix series. This film was about what I expected, perfectly enjoyable but I wasn’t as hyped up for it as anyone else I knew. I did think its intense lean into self-referential material worked extremely well, and its heavy-handed rejection of the coöpting of the original film’s motifs was well-deserved and well-executed.
Psycho Goreman (2020)
Not really a horror film so much as a… monster buddy film? It plays with some horror type tropes, and it’s not afraid to get a little gross and gory, but it’s wonderfully self-aware and not afraid to joke around. Brilliant film.
Werewolves Within (2021)
Fun comedy horror thing. Somehow based on a Ubisoft game? I know nothing about the game, but I’m still shocked that the film was at all self-aware and genuinely a pretty good time. Silly characters kind of drive the whole experience.