The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Monday, January 29, 2007 - 5A CONCERT REVIEW Rufus who? Others shine at A2 folk fest ByANNAASH' DailyArts Writer Nudity, profanity, an accordi- on player named Tinkerbelle - in between the many singer- Ann Arbor songwriters Folk Festival were pleasantly unforeseenioddi- Saturday night ties in last week- end's Ann Arbor At Hill Auditorium Folk Festival. Regardless of whether or not The Slambovian Circus of Dreams satis- fied your folk appetite, you have to give The Ark props for filling Hill Auditorium with both dreadlocks and people who remember the ABC "Hootenanny" series. Both nights were arranged so that lesser-known groups began the night with short sets; this with the inten- tion that the night would progress with longer sets and more entertain- ing music. Unfortunately, for Friday night, the very opposite was true. Millish, a local group that mingles bluegrass fiddle with traditional Irish pipes and whistles, started the night. While this group may be young, they werewithoutadoubtsomeofthemost technically and creatively advanced musicians at the festival. Millish was one of the few acts that provided the 'festivalgoers with something novel gifted musicians with an innova- tive sound. Sadly, they were given the shortest set of the night. A few guitars later, the Kiyoshi Nagata Ensemble took the audience by surprise with their Japanese taiko drumming and flawlessly choreo- graphed performance. Kiyoshi's sim- plicity and precision was riveting, especially during Aki Takahashi's spotlight on vocals and the three- stringed shamisen. In regard to Rufus Wainwright, Friday's headliner: blatant mistakes were made, wrong notes were played and he read off a sheet of lyrics. His voice was nice - but that was all. Saturday was a similar story. A strong start gradually turned to dis- appointment when Paul Thorne tried to get the audience to sing along with, "Well it's a great day for me to whup somebody's ass ... you might get cold- cocked if you cross my path." Luckily the festival regained its dignity with bluegrass virtuosos Mountain Heart and the legendary John Prine. But yet again, the highlight of the night was the first performer, Daisy May. Accompanied by fellow Earth- works musician Seth Bernard, May graced the audience with a voice that rivals Patsy Cline in strength and beauty. She will play again at.The Ark on April 6. It's understandable that the diver- sity of a folk festival won't please everyone. Both nights involved a few musicians who adhered to conven- tion. Granted, complying with the masses is what the music industry is about, but it would have been nice to see the most talented musicians have more than a 15-minute set. All melody, all pop SHINS STICK TO WHAT WORKS ON LATEST By MATT KIVEL DailyArts Writer Girl: A simple, monosyllabic, four-letter word that has long served as a lyrical corner- stone of popular song- writing. Thousands of songs have explored the infinite complexity of The Shins the boy-girl relationship, Wincing the using the g-word as a Night Away euphemism for the heart- S breaking femme fatale Sub Pop ("Girl" by the Beatles) or as a means of naming the ideal woman ("Life's a Gas" by T. Rex). James Mercer of The Shins has an endearing way of singing the word - often varying his delivery to include trills and his own idiosyncratic falsetto. The most disarming part of Mercer's sung "girl" is the lyrical complexity that often sur- rounds it. His use of the word grounds his abstract character portraits and surreal con- fessionals in reality. Upon first listen, it's easy to mistake the opening lyric for a signature piece of Mercer's diction, but listen closely and you'll observe a slightly altered version of the "reliable" Shins sound: "Go, without / till the need seeps in / You're low anymore / Collect your novel petals for the stem / and glow, glow / melt and flow Look at those cute indie rockers. They're so cute. And indie. / Eviscerate your fragile frame / and spill it out in the ragged floor / a thousand different versions of yourself" These are the words of a man growing restless in his artistic skin, seek- ing to "eviscerate his frame" and shed his past identities. Though the lyrics may seem outwardly brave, they are by no means a credo for the album's tone, and Wincing the Night Away is transparently hesitant to abandon the pop for- mulas that have endeared The Shins to so many people - and understandably so. James Mercer is one of the most talented tunesmiths in mod- ern pop music, and rejecting the cozy confines of his irresistible melodies would be a chal- lenge for any band. So The Shins are caught in a musical purgatory in which they timidly dip their toes into experimentation while clinging dearly to familiar conventions. Wincing's most obvious successes are found in the songs that slightly update the tone of their earlier work. "Phantom Limb" is power pop in all its bombastic glory, with guitars and drums that reverberate endlessly around ascending vocal refrains (think Big Star meets The Jesus and Mary Chain). Poignant songs like "Sleeping Lessons" and "A Comet Appears" benefit from tasteful and precise instrumental arrangements. But the album's key moment is the frolick- ing sing-along "Australia." Exuding joy and melodic inventiveness, the band sounds loose and unwieldy, comfortable and carefree, con- trasting starkly with Wincing's more over- wroughtsongs. It's clear that certain tracks were experi- ments of sorts; but many of them fail to trans- late into fully realized compositions. "Black Wave" is abrooding foray into prog-rock, while "Split Needles" is a perplexing attempt at post- punk. "Sea Legs" isthe most confounding of all these experiments in its excessive length and overblown string and vocal arrangement. Lyri- cally, Mercer is still incredibly sharp, and the songs brim with surreal juxtapositions, "You'd be damned to be one of us, girl / faced with a dodo's conundrum / Ah, I felt like I could just fly /but nothing happens every time I try." Wincing exposes The Shins for who they really are: a great melodic pop band. When they abandon melodic structures they often fail to produce worthwhile results. The Byrds, Love and The Zombies were all great melody- based pop bands who found ways to innovate without losing their harmonic foundation, and The Shins should do the same. Mercer should be proud to sing about his "girl" - there's no need for him to run from what he does best. oFIL on RE he1rsS e ' No one here but us shadows Savage bite, superficial wound By KRISTIN MACDONALD DailyFilm Editor Steven Soderbergh is the sort of director who doesn't just make a film - he crafts a project. If his results are hit-or-miss, at least he's consistently interesting. "The Good German," The Good his latestaboroflove, is German a full-blown homage to At the the beautiful black and Showcase white of '40s postwar Warner Bros. -ooir cinema, though it doesn't so much emulate its predecessors as borrow directly from them. A chiaroscuro 'ewer sequence directly recalls Carol Reed's "The Third Man," and the "Casablanca"- 5ipped ending clubs you over the head. Amus- Ing as a collage may be for the observant novielover, this plundering of classic cinema ,makes the film feel uneven and gimmicky. The place is Berlin, the year is 1944, and -eorge Clooney is Jake Geismer, a U.S. war rcorrespondent back in town to take care of dome unfinished business. The plot devolves into a confusing mix of betrayals and mis- taken identities, connecting Jake's German ex-flame (Cate Blanchett), her smarmy boy- friend (a typecast Tobey Maguire) and many possible political patsies. Though the film is based on the well-liked' novel by Joseph Kanon, the story is beside the point. This is about style and, to Soderbergh's credit, there's plenty of it. Clooney has never looked jauntier,and Blanchett,draped against a doorjamb with the weary eyes of a modern Marlene Dietrich, exudes enough heat from her printed housedress to hook you from her first frame. Filtered through shadows and cigarette smoke, Soderbergh presents high- contrast black and white of which those '40s filmmakers could have only dreamed. It's too bad he forgets substance. "The Good German" could easily have leaped the stilted bounds of its overly convoluted plot if the two leads had the chemistry their empha- sized relationship implies. But sparks never fly; the involved parties just seem like game participants in a novel little experiment. Soderbergh's creative nostalgia ends up a worthwhile exercise in old-school film tech- nique, but his respectful nod to the past never culls together an identity of its own. By JEFFREY BLOOMER ManagingEditor In "Notes on a Scandal," the regally smarmy new feature from director Richard Eyre ("Stage Beauty"), a solitary scene distin- guishes itself by sitting the characters down to ** speak frankly to each other for the first time. Notes on a After trying to fight her Scandal way through. a crowd At the State of mutinous. London Theater, reporters ablaze with Quality 16 and the news of her affair Showcase with her 15-year-old Fox Searchlight student, Sheba (Cate Blachett) is forced into the basement apart- ment of Barbara (Judi Dench), a maverick wit and fellow teacher whom Sheba has just learned engineered the public outcry over her affair. They sit at a table, quietly aghast, and viciously cut into each other. And it's about time. Penned with the blood-on-the-walls savagery of playwright Patrick Marber ("Closer") from the Zoe Hell- er novel, "Notes on a Scandal" moves along at such a breakneck pace and is charged with such malicious insincerity between the char- acters that the final confrontation is extraor- dinarily cathartic. The rest of the film is little more than the requisite faux prestige piece that sneaks its way into the awards season every year. Not a half hour into the movie, when we learn of Sheba's affair and of Barbara's intent to use it to make Sheba fall in love with her (yes, really), the anxious rush of the screenplay has already begun to lose its way. As the characters work diligently to ensure their eternal misery, even Barbra's venomous run- ning commentary on Shelia's life (spoken by Dench in a deadpan voice-over) becomes just another part of the grind. It's uncharacteristic of talent like Dench and Blanchett to put so much into so little, especially in a film featuring the year's most elegantly packaged homophobia and a cam- era that treads a little too comfortably down its 15-year-old paramour's waistline. The screenplay is a live wire, but this parade of pointless transgressions is no less inane for it. If this is your idea of entertainment, indulge. But for my student discount, "Stomp the Yard" is playing down the street, and I hear the popcorn refills are a total steal. 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