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Arts
Friday, January 30, 2015 — 5

Psychedelic Pond

Australian 

alternative band 
is reminiscent of 

MGMT

By MELINA GLUSAC

Daily Arts Writer

What’s 
happening 
down 

under? Trippy stuff, man — the 
good (see: Tame Impala), the ugly 
and the decent. In the latter cat-
egory lies the 
weirdest named 
of the Austra-
lian psychedelic 
revival groups, 
Pond. 
Current 

members 
Nick 

Allbrook, 
Jay 

Watson, Joseph 
Ryan and Jamie 
Terry fill the 
lineup, though 
Pond was origi-
nally 
intended 

to be, in true hippy fashion, a 
fluid, come-and-go-as-you-please 
collaborative project. 

These water boys have since 

released 
an 
impressive 
five 

albums, even with three of their 
members double-dipping in the 
Tame Impala pool — a band whose 
pool, in comparison to Pond’s, 
seems a little crisper, more fresh. 
Regardless, Pond’s latest addi-
tion to their repertoire, Man It 
Feels Like Space Again, is indeed a 
return to extremely psychedelic, 

space-y rock with many shining, 
listenable moments. Yet, it seems 
one-noted and boring, even — lost 
in space. Also, is that title sup-
posed to be a Shania Twain allu-
sion? We’ll never know.

“Waiting Around for Grace” 

is a representative, adequate 
start. It’s an enjoyable, MGMT-
esque number graced with weird 
synths that somehow work with 
a catchy beat. “Zond,” a distant-
sounding tune following a more 
formulaic structure (solid beat, 
verses and a main chorus), man-
ages to capture pop appeal with 
psychedelic flair. It’s undeniably 
spacey, though, complete with 
Bowie-like interludes and synths 
that put it at the front of the run-
ning for a new Rainbow Road 
theme song. Both songs prove 
listenable as hell without losing 
the “trip” factor — an admirable 
accomplishment.

At points, the album is down-

right fun — Pond reminds us that 
this is a key ingredient in the 
often-too-chill genre of psyche-
delic rock. “Elvis’ Flaming Star” 
starts like some ’80s dance tune 
a la “Footloose” and turns into a 

funky, slightly echoey, cool grove. 
“Outside Is The Right Side” glis-
tens as the best track on the album 
— its wah-wah guitar, synths and 
badass energy make it dance-y 
rather than fancy or caught up in 
the existential intricacies of sit-
ting by a river (i.e., “Holding Out 
for You,” a lovely yawn-fest). 

It all starts to go downhill 

from there; quality and tempo 
slow down. The best of this shit-
ty (intended), glacial bunch is 
“Heroic Shart,” an uncomfort-
ably sensual song about, well, 
you guessed it. It’s so out there 
and odd that, in addition to being 
barely listenable, it’s not memora-
ble in the slightest, as hard as that 
is with a title like that. “Sitting 
On Our Crane” is slow done right, 
but it’s overpowered by the medi-
ocrity of numbers like “Medicine 
Hat.” This one gives acoustic 
undertones a shot and sounds a 
lot like of those bar songs that, 
when you’re plastered next to 
your friends, you’re definitely 
rocking to. But sober, it’s not that 
good.

The ironic worst of the album 

is the title track, an 8-minute 
attempted epic that results in a 
grand hot mess. Luckily for us, 
there is a plethora of great psy-
chedelic bands out there these 
days; Australia is contributing 
to this growing population. And 
though the quest to find those 
bands sometimes takes a little 
hunting and gathering, there are 
plenty of fish in the pond. Take a 
stab.

UNIVERSAL MUSIC AUSTRALIA

Who even are these guys?

‘Grantchester’ is 
comfortable viewing

By SOPHIA KAUFMAN

Daily Arts Writer

“Grantchester,” 
the 
latest 

installment of PBS’s “Master-
piece Mystery!” 
is a new offer-
ing for lovers of 
phenomenons 
such as “Down-
ton 
Abbey,” 

“Agatha Chris-
tie’s Marple” or 
“Sherlock,” and 
the 
premiere 

promises 
that 

it will be just 
as 
entertain-

ing, if not more 
so, as the rest. “Grantchester” 
has all the makings of a com-
fortable 1950’s period drama: 
a sexy, unobtainable protago-
nist who solves crimes when 
he’s not preaching the word of 
God, beautiful shots of English 
countryside, women with killer 
lipstick slyly dropping hints, 
adulterous affairs and, of course, 
a suicide case that is much more 
complicated than it seems.

James Norton (“Happy Val-

ley”) plays Sidney Chambers, 
a young vicar with a chiseled 
jawline and soulful eyes who 
unintentionally invites the con-
fidence of those around him. 
After presiding over a funeral of 
a man who has apparently com-
mitted suicide, he is approached 
by a young woman who tells him 
in between puffs of cigarette 
smoke that there’s reason to 
believe the dead man was mur-
dered — namely, the fact that he 
was unhappy in his marriage and 
was having an affair. Chambers 
agrees to investigate, irritat-
ing Inspector Geordie Keating, 
(Robson 
Green, 
“Touching 

Evil”), a grumpy, skeptical cop 
who eventually realizes it would 

behoove him to work with the 
vicar rather than get in his way. 
The two become friends as they 
pry into village affairs and poke 
their noses into the details of 
the murdered man’s former life, 
eventually solving the crime in a 
tidy 50 minutes.

“Grantchester,” albeit predict-

able, somehow manages to feel 
refreshing. It follows the for-
mulas of crime procedurals and 
period dramas, from the elegant 
adornments of the mantlepiece 
that remind the dead man’s wife 
of their honeymoon to the gentle 
piano background music to the 
vicar’s morally upright landlady 
(Tessa 
Peak-Jones, 
“Poirot”). 
 

But it adds bits of tongue-in-
cheek humor that keep the show 
relevant, especially concerning 
the tension between the reli-
gious and secular aspects of the 
not-so-sleepy little town. 

Norton’s portrayal of his char-

acter as pleasant and open, rather 
than cynical and reclusive — as 
is characteristic of many of our 
favorite crime-solving heroes — 
also feels fresh. When Chambers 
figures out that he has solved the 
crime, based on a second closer 

reading of the supposed suicide 
note that actually is describing 
the man’s desire to end a rela-
tionship, not his life, Chamber’s 
excitement is palpable; he takes 
time to check on the people 
involved, instead of moving right 
on to the next crime with a yawn 
and glass of whiskey (although 
that comes later as well, to the 
constant surprise of people who 
insist on offering him sherry). 
Even the fact that he clearly 
has feelings for his adventurous 
friend Amanda Kendall, (Mor-
ven Christie, “Case Histories”) 
who has a new ring on her finger, 
doesn’t embitter him — not yet, 
anyway. 

Don’t look for deviations from 

the script in “Grantchester,” 
because you won’t find them. 
There are no plot twists that 
break the pattern of a 50-min-
ute mystery series — but there 
doesn’t need to be. “Grantches-
ter” may feel familiar, but it’s the 
kind of familiar that goes along 
with curling up on the couch 
holding a pint of ice cream and a 
blanket on Sunday nights — the 
kind that we all need, at least 
every once in a while.

PBS

“She turned me into a newt.”

B-

‘Man It Feels 
Like Space 
Again’

Pond

Universal 
Music Aus-
tralia

At points, 

the album is 

downright fun.

A-

Grantches-
ter

Series Pilot

Sundays at 
10 p.m.

PBS

FOOD COLUMN

How I learned to love 
Rome and not cry
I 

always cry when I get to 
Rome. My ocular aqueducts 
dry up after a minute or two, 

but right after I deposit my bag in 
the corner, I 
always find 
myself rest-
ing my head 
against a 
hard wall, 
taking one 
long breath 
and letting 
a few salty 
drops fall to 
the floor.

These 

are not tears of joy or elation or 
even exhaustion. They are tears of 
anxiety.

If that sounds like the most 

ridiculous 
thing 
you’ve 
ever 

heard, I don’t blame you. And it is 
a bit ridiculous. But allow me to 
explain.

Having some sort of passion is 

always a good thing, be it paint-
ing or polo or parcheesi. It sets 
you apart from others. It gives 
you a niche. But a passion for 
food sounds exceedingly normal, 
even necessary, like a passion for 
breathing or sleeping. 

By the time I was 12, I knew 

food was the only thing that really 
interested me, the only thing that 
I could read and write and talk 
about without end. But everyone 
around me liked food too. To set 
myself apart, I approached food 
with a near-academic obses-
sion. I read cookbooks. I watched 
documentaries on chef’s knives 
and cheesemaking. I kept track 
of what the best restaurants in 
the world had on their menus, 
even though most of them were in 
France or Spain. I was determined 
to be more than someone who 
liked to eat.

My upbringing only strength-

ened this desire. As you might have 
glossed from my name, I grew up 
in a family that was consciously, 
and conspicuously, more Italian 
than Italian-American. We said 
“parmigiano,” not “parmesan,” 
and only ate spaghetti with meat-
balls on Christmas. Pretentious 
little foodie that I was, I loved it 
— being Italian seemed more cere-
bral. My father, born and raised in 
North Jersey, was the inspiration 
for all of this, for which I am more 
and more thankful as I get older. 
He talked about food in Italy, and 
Rome in particular, like he talked 
about the novels of Henry James 
and Pedro Martinez’s split-finger 
fastball: that it was an unrivaled 
sublime, the summa of the genre, 
the platonic ideal. By the time I 
actually went to Italy, I assumed 
even a stick of gum there would 
merit a Michelin star.

This is why I get so anxious 

when I arrive in Rome. I assume 
that food is split between whorish 
tourist traps, and the gastronomic 
Madonnas, and it’s up to me to 
find the latter. Every meal is a test, 
where I determine if I have found 
the flawless food that I so often 
dreamed of. Here’s how bad it can 
get: I once refused to eat a slice of 
pizza late on a boozy Friday night 
because I hadn’t checked my Ital-
ian restaurant guide.

I’m back in Rome now, and yes, 

I cried the first day.But ever since 
last Saturday, I’ve chilled out a 
bit, because I had an eye-opening 
meal. When I say “eye-opening,” 
that probably conjures a young 
American who travels to Italy, 
nervously enters small eating 
establishment, tastes pasta, and 
murmurs “ah, I finally understand 
— THIS is what pasta is!” 

But the lunch I had at Eno-

teca Corsi on Friday, just a stone’s 
throw from the Pantheon, was 
eye-opening in a different way. 

I first ate at Corsi in the fall of 

2006, on the first day of a family 
vacation with my italophile par-
ents. I remember, in spite of an 
anesthetizing bout of jet-lag, what 
I ate: a soupy pasta with chickpeas 
and rosemary, sliced veal with 
roasted potatoes, a glass jug of vino 
rosso della casa. 

I came back to Corsi in the sum-

mer of 2013, when I was in Rome 
for a month to work on an archaeo-
logical dig. I had wandered, by 
myself, from the Palatine area, 
toward where I vaguely recalled 
Corsi being. I finally arrived after 
a circuitous hour, with that dis-
tinct tenderness in my feet from 
walking on Rome’s uneven cobble-
stones. It looked more or less how I 
remembered: scruffy dining room, 
several generations of one family 
staffing it, paper napkins. The only 
change being a slightly expanded 
menu now printed on floppy sheets 
of cheap paper instead of being 
written on a blackboard. I ate fet-
tuccine boscaiola, with tomatoes 
and mushrooms, and then roasted 
lamb, all of it lovingly prepared, 
simple, delicious. But my anxious 
expectations were deadening my 
palate a little. I had expected tran-
scendence, and only gotten excel-
lence. 

Fast-forward to last Saturday 

and here I was in Corsi again, 
with two new friends, eating 
pasta with chickpeas and veal 
with potatoes. The dining room 
hadn’t changed much. The menu 
still had adorable mistransla-
tions like “pasta with tomato and 
chilly.” The chef still emerged 
from the kitchen for a cigarette 
every now and then, his hair a 
little more salt than pepper since 
I last saw him.

I pondered each dish as it 

arrived. I hadn’t had chickpeas 
this plump, but didn’t one of my 
cookbooks say that a pasta dish 
be shouldn’t be this soupy? The 
potatoes were crisp on the out-
side, waxy-smooth on the inside, 
all cut different sizes — was that 
intentional? 

While I examined the viscos-

ity of my veals sauce, the regulars 
were arriving for lunch. Groups of 
elderly, elegant men and women 
hugged and kissed the owners 
before seating themselves and 
ordering liters of house wine and 
plates of roasted fish. Some read 
newspapers, others stabbed and 
slashed the air with passionate 
gesticulations. This meal was 
clearly a weekly, maybe even daily 
ritual. 

I looked down at my own food. 

The garlic cloves roasted with 
the potatoes were unpeeled. The 
veal had a bit of un-caramelized 
fat rimming the outside. Then I 
realized why I loved this place so 
much: It was normal. Not mind-
blowing, not avant-garde or cut-
ting edge or even world-class. 
Just normal, fun, comfortable 
and satisfying. 

There is a tendency amongst 

even those who haven’t been to 
Rome to assume that a trip to 
Rome will be a highlight reel of 
food porn. Most articles about 
Roman food usually sound like 
this: “When I bit into the brus-
chetta, and the blood-red toma-
toes burst and filled my mouth 
with their sweet nectar, I gazed 
with teary eyes towards Saint 
Peters and said a little prayer.” 

Rome is a city, populated by 

normal people with normal lives, 
who all have to eat. There’s good 
food and bad food, cheap food and 
expensive food, food for special 
occasions and food for the rest 
of the time. And if I had to eat in 
one place for the rest of my life, I 
might choose here. Not because of 
any rankings or guidebooks, but 
because I like eating pasta with 
chickpeas, and roast veal and 
potatoes, on Friday afternoons. 

The view of the Pantheon 

doesn’t hurt.

Buonomo is crying into a bowl 

of pasta. To tell him to get a grip, 

email gbuonomo@umich.edu. 

GIANCARLO 

BUONOMO

This meal was 
clearly a weekly, 

maybe even 
daily ritual.

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