This week's recommendations once again come from very different ends of the entertainment spectrum, as Features Editor Jen Lennon embarks on a cozy mystery game and Film Editor Jacob Oller praises the new solo album from Jack White.
It's raining outside the BearBus office as private investigator Eugene McQuacklin surveys the building. There's a flyer advertising a new bus route to the mountains of Salsiccia. McQuacklin once dreamed of taking his wife there, but that flight of fancy is long gone now, lost somewhere in the haze of addiction and past-due rent notices and divorce papers. Now, he needs to solve the case that's waiting for him on the other side of those run-down double doors. It's not some misguided quest for redemption; he just doesn't have enough money to get back home. Unless he wants to hoof it all the way across town when this is all over, he's gotta earn enough cash to catch a bus back to his office-slash-apartment so he can indulge again. It'd be pretty beak—er, bleak—if McQuacklin wasn't a duck addicted to white bread. As it stands, Happy Broccoli Games' Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a loving homage to noir tropes that nails the balance between comedy and mystery, a funny game that takes the genre seriously.
Released back in May, Duck Detective is the latest addition to the small but growing sub-sub-genre of bird-themed detective games (other examples include the excellent Aviary Attorney and Chicken Police, which has a sequel coming out later this year). You play as McQuacklin, a down-on-his-luck duck called in to investigate a case of theft—lunch theft. A sandwich has been snatched by someone leaving taunting messages signed "The Salami Bandit." After you get acquainted with everyone who works at the office, your first task is to figure out who your client is. The initial phone call was rushed and lacked detail, but you were desperate. "Looking for a job. Will do almost anything," you posted on Bluesky, and then you found yourself wading through puddles and office politics in equal measure.
Of course, there's more here than meets the eye. The game is short, at roughly 2-3 hours per playthrough, but it packs in several twists as you unravel the central mystery. To figure out the identity of the salami bandit, you must investigate the office, interview suspects, and fill out deducktions (not a typo) in your notebook (think The Case Of The Golden Idol, but less overtly weird, somehow, even though this world is populated by anthropomorphic animals). The gameplay and puzzle-solving aren't particularly difficult, but that's not really the point: it's simply delightful to play this game. Even if you're not into video games but love mysteries, you might want to give this a shot—it's available for PC, Mac, and Linux, in addition to Nintendo Switch and Xbox, and the controls are about as simple as you'll find in a game outside of a visual novel. It's also fully voice-acted, which we always have to give props for. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami might sound goofy, but it's clear that the team at Happy Broccoli takes their ducktective work seriously. [Jen Lennon]
It’s not that Jack White has ever been off the rock 'n’ roll radar since launching The White Stripes into the mainstream with White Blood Cells (and launching the mainstream back into the garage), but he’s taken the kind of artistic side streets that seem especially alluring after having massive success. White made music with The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather before launching a solo career, going deep into his bluesy roots for Blunderbuss and indulging his rock virtuosity in Lazaretto. But after a decade since that latter, wild, no holds barred album (and with a few forgettable experiments in between), White has stripped his sound back to grungy, crunchy basics with No Name, which I cannot believe is as good as it is.
Having just finished our 2004 week retrospective, I’ve got nostalgia on my mind. So, while I’m not eager to rush back to the early '00s, No Name is a nasty, hooky, piece of throwback guitar rock that will make you remember how powerful The White Stripes were at their peak. A couple chords, an earworm bass line, an unrelenting drum beat—that’s all they needed to go from DIY Detroit shows to every single commercial ever made and every game ever held between two sports teams. No Name gets back to that deceptively simple sound, with White’s slurring guitar slinking through instantly catchy riffs while his angry, reedy howl soars above it. White also initially released the album, secretly, as a free vinyl included with any purchase at his Detroit, London, and Nashville record stores. A charming oldhead move from a classicist rockstar.
And then when those lucky record-buyers went home and fired it up, "Old Scratch Blues" set their players on fire. A sultry lick morphs into a chugging rock motor, which doesn’t let up for five straight tracks. “Bless Yourself” sounds like White is channeling Rage Against The Machine’s Zack de la Rocha—if Zack de la Rocha looked a little bit like Wormtongue knew about heroin—ranting in sharp bursts over metallic funk. “Archbishop Harold Holmes” almost has him doing one of E-40’s inventively rhyming lyrical stumbles. But “That’s How I’m Feeling” is surely the breakout song from the album, just because it’s got a memorable chorus splitting the difference between pure, lean rock and something that Apple might snap up to sell phones. It’s not that the song is poppy, but that it’s reminiscent of the post-Y2K moment when The White Stripes helped that kind of rock become poppy.
Throughout, White focuses on relatable topics: being broke, being disillusioned, being unloved, being able to play the guitar like a strike of lightning. Though there’s a religion-flavored throughline, more than anything, the talk of devils and gods and preachermen speaks to the big, romantic, loud-as-hell music White is interested in making. Garage rock is back through this kickass solo show, and it’s biblical. [Jacob Oller]
