Monday, July 12, 2010
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

19

Y returns

'Winter's Bone' is a
summer sensation

On'self-titled' album,
M.I.A. turns up the
volume on technology
By SHARON JACOBS
ManagingArts Editor
M.IA.'s baby's heartbeat was
recorded for her new album,
/\/\/\Y/\, accord-
ing to her producer **-%
Rusko - but you
can't hear it above M.I.A.
the album's noise.
Then again, it's hard /\I\MyA
to hear anything on XL
/\/\/\Y/\ above the
noise that's been made lately about its
artist.
Most recently, writer Lynn
Hirschberg portrayed the "Paper
Planes" singer as a know-nothing
hypocritical agitator in a New York
Times profile. M.I.A. tweeted her
reactionary rage online, and soon all
facts were lost in the ensuing bitch-
fest.
It's true that M.I.A. drifts toward
the overly explosive. It's true that
Hirschberg unethically quoted and
wrongly portrayed her subject. But
mostly, it's just ironic that an Inter-
net-fueled fight proved so distracting
from an intriguing album that deals
with the ever-presence of technol-
ogy.
Leavingthe cyber-squabbles aside,

the best thing going for /\/\/\Y/\
(techspeak for "Maya," the singer's
given name) is its eclecticism. "Sound
of a bomb blast, throw it in the bag,"
M.I.A. pronounces above screeches
of revving machines on "Steppin'
Up," and she would. The track serves
as M.I.A.'s manifesto: Beyond the
repetitive and overconfident lyrics,
she really can make music from sur-
prising things.
The highlights of /\/\/\Y/\ find
M.I.A. spinning in different direc-
tions. Heavy-hitting single "XXXO"
grinds on thick percussion and blar-
ing beeps, but it's also one of the sing-
er's pop star-iest songs ever. "You
want me be somebody who I'm really
not," M.ILA. chants. Closer to sing-
ing here than she usually treads, the
Sri Lankan star proves that she has
a competent voice as well as a killer
accent. And, delivering the cho-
rus, her split-second pause between
the X's makes the combined letters
sound like "sex," or maybe "excess,"
or "success" - any of which, really,
makes sense for M.I.A.
"Lovalot" is a complete turn-
around, soft and shuffling over a
Middle Eastern-sounding base. More
enunciation tricks turn "I really
love a lot" into "I really love Allah,"
a clever twist of meaning furthered
by lyrical images of Taliban truckers,
burqas and bombs on Mecca.
Dubstep-inflected "Story To Be
Told" uses echoey nonsense voices
and morphing, layered beats for an


air of centerless nostalgia. Three
minutes later, the techno-Caribbean
groove of "It Takes A Muscle" light-
ens things up. And simple-minded
mantra "Born Free" enters with a
punch that it sustains all through the
Io-fi whooping and creepy electronic
pre-punk band-sampling, until its
final yelp of "Bo- bo- bo- bo- bo- /
Born free." The common denomina-
tor between all the tracks is M.LA.'s
typical singsong repetitions of phras-
es that kind of make sense, plus tech
references in both lyrics and music.
M,,,,-
L19
Peekaboo, I see you!
But although technology is sup-
posedly the underlying theme of
the album, the many appearances of
computers, Twitter, etc. don't actu-
ally seem to be saying anything about
the hi-tech life. "My lines are down,
you can't call me / As I float around
in space or the sea," states glitch-y
See M.I.A., Page 10


By ANDREW LAPIN
Editor in Chief
"Winter's Bone" has one of those
killer screen moments where the
audience suddenly, unquestion-
ably knows it's
hooked. It's about*
15 minutes in,
when steely-eyed Winters
17-year-old Ree
Dolly, trying to Bone
track down her At the Michigan
runaway meth-
cooking father, Roadside
Atactions
comes knocking
at the door of her
uncle, Teardrop. No one up until this
point has been able or willing to give
Ree any help, but Teardrop (John
Hawkes, TV's "Deadwood") knows
something. Rather than tell her, he
harshly throttles her and warns her
to stay away.
This is the world painted so viv-
idly in "Winter's Bone": a landscape
where every dilapidated house and
untamed forest hides terrible secrets
and unfathomable dangers. But Ree
has to plunge herself deeper and
deeper into-this blood-linked crime
underworld if she wants to save her
family from the hopeless existence
that her father has damned them all
to. And from the moment she looks
defiantly in the face of the man who

threatens not to go any further, we're
right there along with her.
As Ree, Jennifer Lawrence ("The
Burning Plain") projects an unreal
intensity. She may deliver the perfor-
mance of the year: rich with a sense
of maternal protection, yet tough and
hardened enough to stare all of her
oppressors (and there are a lot) in
the face without backing down. Ree -
has been charged with taking care of
her two younger siblings and mute,
mentally repressed mother by herself
in the harsh landscape of rural Mis-
souri. Her absentee father put their
house up for bail bond, and the family
will lose it unless Ree can track him
down. Lawrence makes us feel the
weight of the world on her shoulders
every step of the way.
Ree seeks
answers in a
desolate Ozark
landscape.
While Lawrence rightfully occu-
pies a large portion of this movie's
spotlight, director Debra Granik
See WINTER, Page 10


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