The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, March 24, 2015 — 5
TV REVIEW
Marling echoes
retro heartbreak
Singer-songwriter’s
new album takes
influence from the
West Coast greats
By AMELIA ZAK
Daily Music Editor
“To find a queen without a king
/ They say she plays guitar and
cries and sings”
Legend has it that these lyrics
from the famous
Led
Zeppelin
record,
“Going
to
California,”
were written by
the Robert Plant
and Jimmy Page
upon
meeting
Joni
Mitch-
ell among the
groupies and drugged-up music
scene of California in the ’70s. Her
ethereal appearance, free-form
spirit and inexplicably firm grasp
on the emotions of the human
heart had the boys enamored, leav-
ing her as an object of affection for
the hopelessly romantic, exces-
sively drugged rock ‘n’ rollers of
the California communes.
Joni held her fair share of heart-
break, too. Her 1971 album, Blue,
with its octave-jumping vocals,
glossy piano and acoustic guitar
instrumentations, is still consid-
ered one of the most perfect rela-
tionship postmortem records. It’s
a retrospective looking back on
the good and bad of a relationship,
with added reflections of her expe-
riences in California and tattered
relationships — drawing the face
of Leonard Cohen on the map of
Canada in “A Case of You” — and
continues to sonically mend the
breaking hearts of today.
A critical eye can easily demar-
cate the modern folk/singer-song-
writer genre as one domineered
by men. Back in the ’60s and ’70s,
Joni was matched by a number
of
female
singer-songwriters:
Carly Simon, Carole King, Janis
Ian and Joan Baez, just to name a
few. The music anthologies of the
past decade are seemingly lacking
popular, well-written female folk
music. Much is seemingly lost to
the electronics and production
styles of the 21st century. To rescue
the genre, to pioneer a voice similar
to that of the all feeling, unafraid
Joni – a woman finding confidence
and understanding in her poetic
description of her life experiences
– is found in a 25-year-old, pixie-
cut, thin English young woman.
The voice Joni once provided so
many decades ago is recreated
and individualized in the musical
anthology of Laura Marling.
The daughter of a recording
studio owner, Marling was the
youngest daughter of three to
the Sir Charles William Som-
erset Marling, the 5th Marling
Baronet. Her introduction to
music was early, and by the age
of sixteen she had written her
first hit in the light, simple single
“New
Romantic.”
Re-settling
on the outskirts of London with
her sisters, Marling’s career took
off almost immediately. She was
swept into numerous impressive
recording studios and the “nu-
folk” community that had begun
to emerge from the London music
scene in the mid-’00s, among the
like being the now-famous names
of Mumford & Sons, Noah and the
Whale, Johnny Flynn or Emmy
the Great. Laura performed and
recorded with these acts in her
early career, and famously fell
into romantic relationships with
two of these burgeoning artists.
In a very Joni fashion, Laura has
songs written about her by ex-
boyfriends Marcus Mumford and
Charlie Fink.
Laura’s thoughts on love and
romance
are
unchangeably
embedded in her lyrics over her
past four albums. Vacillating flaw-
lessly between the vulnerability,
hurt and bliss of relationships of
the personal and fictional kind,
her past four albums have carried
breathtaking, yet similar, lyrical
themes with undeniably congru-
ent instrumentations — some-
times hazy or sometimes stormy
production styles, an acoustic
guitar and Marling’s immensely
intriguing vocal range. So in order
to descend from her consistencies,
to escape her doubts in her early-
fame music career, and to re-cen-
ter her life’s inspiration, Laura,
like Joni, went to California.
“How did I get lost looking for
God in Santa Cruz? / Where you
go to lose your mind” sings Mar-
ling on “Easy.” Marling trans-
formed her world prior to her
writing and recording of her fifth
studio album, Short Movie. She
moved to Los Angeles in 2012
for a boy she had fallen in love
with, but a short amount of time
revealed that her visa was to last
much longer than the relation-
ship. She decided to extend her
time in the States, bought a house
in California and drove around to
indifferent regions of the United
States to perform small and com-
pletely self-organized gigs. In
her recent interview with The
Guardian, Marling describes her-
self as “physically wrecked and
spiritually broken” by her time on
the road and decided to take six
months off. Here, she truly came
undone: applying anonymously
and then facing rejection from
a poetry workshop in Saratoga
Springs, New York, taking up a
small restaurant job in California
to cover excess costs and spend-
ing time with the shamans and
hippies she met in the small places
of California.
With this new collection of
experiences, voices and perspec-
tives Marling reworked her sound
into an exquisite album. To match
the underlying aggression, the
album’s sound and lyrics appear
to hold, Short Movie adds more
electric guitar and heavy pro-
duction sounds than any album
Marling has previously recorded.
There’s more room to the album’s
songs, with less strict acoustic
guitar lines and more fading bass
notes. Despite the album’s inno-
vation, however, Short Movie
continues to hold the honest and
storytelling lyrics Marling has
consistently provided. “I don’t
believe this shit / You know I
was doing fine without it” sings
Marling in “Walk Alone” as she
beckons herself to rediscover her
independence following the rejec-
tion of a former love. Poetic anec-
dotes continue in the electrified
track “False Hope,” a song that
illustrates Marling’s experience
on the Upper West Side of New
York City during 2014’s Hurricane
Sandy storms.
But in the album’s title track,
“Short Movie,” the greatest poetic
punch is found. Quoting the life
mantra of a shaman shared with
her in a California bar, Marling
excessively repeats, “It’s a short
fucking movie, man.” For Mitch-
ell or Marling listeners, those who
connect and thrive on their musi-
cal poetry, there is much to gain
from shaman’s advice: Despite the
doubts, heartaches, and never-
ending life crises, sometimes the
life analysis must end and the liv-
ing must continue.
A
Short Movie
Laura Marling
Ribbon Music
COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN
The problem with
celebrities and art
O
h, MoMA. The New
York museum, consid-
ered the world’s top
resource for modern art, has
been undergo-
ing serious
flack for its
universally
panned ret-
rospective on
the indescrib-
able Icelandic
tour de force,
Björk. The New
Yorker called
it “embarrass-
ing,” The Atlantic preferred
“misconceived.” Art Net News
settled for a headline that
proved both straightforward
and scathing: “Ladies and
Gentlemen, the Björk Show
at MoMA is Bad, Really Bad.”
Even in an ambitious Google
search you’d be hard pressed
to find any semblance of a
positive reaction to the event,
which still plans to run until
June 7. The question of the tip
of every art critic’s tongue is, to
put it bluntly, how did MoMA
fuck up so bad?
While I haven’t been able
to see the exhibit in person,
all accounts say pretty much
the same thing. The exhibit is
sparse and the setup is horribly
inconvenient for foot traf-
fic. An accompanying audio
recording proves both bizarre
and disconcerting for listen-
ers and distracts from the
artifacts that highlight Björks
multi-decade career. The
Economist even accused the
show of fetishizing the ethereal
foreignness of the singer into
some sort of intrepid pixie.
Yikes.
The Museum of Modern Art
has a longstanding relation-
ship with celebrity artists. The
museum held a retrospective of
macabre director Tim Burton
in 2009 (also deemed subpar
by critics, but not to the extent
of the Björk show), Marina
Abramovic sat in a chair for
two months in 2010 and stared
at a rotating array of strangers
and celebrities and Tilda Swin-
ton slept in a glass box in the
museum’s atrium for six hours
in 2013. These shows are fun to
attend and provide an interest-
ing experience that viewers
can’t find anywhere else, and,
alternatively, they bring in a
ton of revenue with tourists
who want to tell their friends,
“Yeah, I saw Tilda sleep in a
glass box. It was no big deal.”
However, it’s the style of exhib-
iting, almost exploiting the
celebrity that often dilutes the
intention of the artist, and it
falls on the audience to realize
that they’re getting the short
end of the stick, which the
attendees of the Björk exhibit
became aware of.
The Bjork disaster exempli-
fies a problem that has been
creeping into modern art for
quite some time: When a big
name is behind the art, it
becomes too easy to lean on the
celebrity and not the content,
leaving much to be desired for
the viewer. The celebrity prob-
lem is not exclusive to MoMA
or the world of modern art. A
similar problem plagued the
recent debut of Yeezy Season
1, a ready-to-wear collabora-
tion between adidas Originals
and rapper Kanye West. Crit-
ics’s reactions varied, but the
majority rode the line between
“eh” and accusations of copy-
ing established designers
like Rick Owens. While it’s
anticipated the line will sell
big (it was recently announced
that the luxury department
store Barney’s will begin to
sell the collection later this
year), the question of artistic
merit remains the same: Is the
product selling because of the
face behind the collection or
because of its content?
In a way, this is the ultimate
question of artistic taste. As
audiences and consumers, we
often buy into fashion and art
due to the famous connotations
behind them. We’re excited
by the possibility of finding a
tangible way to connect with
our favorite celebrities, and
the veil of stardom provides
a convenient cover for lack-
ing substance. MoMA learned
the hard way with the Björk
retrospective, but in creating a
highly publicized example of a
collection gone bad, audiences
can learn to be wary of what is
a gimmick and what is art.
Davis is thinking about
Tilda Swinton in her glass box.
To enter the box, email her
at katjacqu@umich.edu.
KATHLEEN
DAVIS
TV REVIEW
‘Bloodline’ unnerves
By HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK
Daily Arts Writer
This past Friday brought two
things: the beginning of spring
and the release of “Bloodline” on
Netflix.
Upon
first
glance,
these
events
didn’t seem too
far removed, for
both marked the
start of a sea-
son — one with
warmer weath-
er, renewed rela-
tionships and fresh hope for the
future.
Set in the emerald-hued hum
of the Florida Keys, “Blood-
line” follows the Rayburns, a
prominent island family with
a successful beachside inn. To
celebrate the 45th anniversary
of the family business, Mama
(Sissy Spacek, “The Help”) and
Papa (Sam Shepard, “Mud”) Ray-
burn have invited their four adult
children and dozens of guests to
a party draped with Mason-jar
lanterns and champagne — a sun-
dress affair with kicked-off cork
wedges, salty breezes and bare
feet spraying sand into the green
Gulf Stream. Sounds like the kind
of summer-dreaming indulgence
everyone needs to watch come
springtime, right?
But as anyone familiar with the
tropics knows, it’s not all margari-
tas and sunshine. Wetness doesn’t
just stay in the sea — it pervades
the land, floods murky mangroves
and drenches its inhabitants, mak-
ing everything just soggy enough
to never dry out completely. Like-
wise, though the Rayburns wear
cheery faces, something very dark
festers beneath their surface like a
hidden pocket of mold.
For “Bloodline” viewers, how-
ever, the Rayburns’s shady past is
made painstakingly visible. The
first episode opens with a gor-
geous view of the islands’ Seven
Mile Bridge surrounded by water,
coupled with a foreboding voice-
over: “Sometimes, you know
something’s coming. You can feel
it. In the air. In your gut. And you
don’t sleep at night. The voice in
your head is telling you that some-
thing is going to go terribly wrong
and there’s nothing you can do to
stop it.”
The voice is soon revealed to be
John “the Pope” Rayburn’s, the
middle son of the family whose
moral duties as sheriff extend
far beyond the police headquar-
ters, a role naturally filled by Kyle
Chandler (“Friday Night Lights”).
Perpetually wearing a shirt and
tie despite the searing heat, John
plays the father figure among his
siblings — his word is final, though
it may not always be as fair and
good as his reassuring voice spins
it to be.
As sheriff, John can sense an
imminent threat — the “some-
thing’s coming” he warns of is
his older brother, Danny, played
by Australian actor Ben Men-
delsohn
(“The
Dark
Knight
Rises”). Labeled frequently as
the “black sheep” of the family,
Danny obviously sticks out among
the other Rayburns — where the
other children have resided close
to their parents in Florida, Danny
has been M.I.A. His clothes are
greasy, his pockets jammed with
pain medicine and cigarettes.
Though his intentions seem inno-
cent — coming to his family’s cel-
ebration, bringing home a date,
having a drink with dad — Danny’s
body language oozes threat. He
downs his rum a little too quick-
ly; the date he brings is intoler-
ably drunk. His movements ripple
tension along the beach, causing
everyone to question his real rea-
sons for returning.
Danny’s presence rocks the
Rayburns the most, who all seem
to hold something against him.
The youngest son and “hot-head”
of the family, Kevin (Norbert Leo
Butz, “Dan in Real Life”), is con-
vinced that his brother is back for
revenge, aiming to hurt both the
family and the inn. Meanwhile
their sister, Meg (Linda Cardel-
lini, “Freaks and Geeks”), is a law-
yer and struggles to choose a side
that won’t make her the bad guy
— by agreeing with her father that
Danny should be sent away, she’d
lose her older brother forever.
Though they all have different
reasons to dread their brother’s
return, through jolting flashbacks
and flashforwards, it becomes
clear that something in the past
— and in the near future — went
horribly wrong. So if the first few
episodes of “Bloodline” seem to
be stuck in the doldrums, keep in
mind that there’s always a calm
before the storm.
A-
Bloodline
Season 1
Premiere
Netflix
TV REVIEW
Harrowing ‘24 Days’
By LAUREN WOOD
For The Daily
From the opening scene, “24
Days,” directed by Alexandre
Arcady (“What the Day Owes
the
Night”)
and
released
last April, does
not let you for-
get that it’s not
just
a
crime
drama; it’s the
recreation of a
horrifying and
very true event. Following the
kidnapping and eventual death of
young Frenchman Ilan Halimi,
the victim of a vicious 2006
anti-Semitic crime that sparked
a series of massive protests, the
film works to further personalize
the cataclysmic event and remind
its audience that, at the heart of
this larger issue of French anti-
Semitism, there was one young
man and his family.
After Shabbat dinner in Janu-
ary 2006, Ilan Halimi (Syrus Sha-
hidi, “Quantum Love”) leaves to
get drinks with a mysterious girl
he met earlier that day at work.
His family, who believes he’s
with his girlfriend, thinks little
of his late night. While wonder-
ing why he isn’t at lunch the next
day, his family receives a harrow-
ing e-mail demanding an impos-
sible ransom in exchange for
Ilan’s life. They are set on a tur-
bulent and emotionally charged
path, negotiating with the police
and the large network of kidnap-
pers for over three weeks before
Ilan is released unexpectedly,
dying en route to the hospital
from injuries sustained after
weeks of torture.
A gripping story in itself, the
narrative structure of the film
is straightforward and entirely
plot-driven, forcing the viewer to
experience the story alongside the
family and kidnappers as changes
are made to the case. The focus
shifts chronologically between
the two groups as information
about Ilan’s captors is revealed
and the police learn more about
the large network of criminals,
from the bottom-tier beautiful
“lures” (attractive women hired
as bait to entice their targets and
get them alone) and mindless
musclemen all the way to a ruth-
less mastermind working from
the Ivory Coast. This focus seems
to detract from the experiences
of the family and risks shifting
our sympathies to the lower-
tier criminals coerced into the
group out of financial necessity.
We experience the family’s life
through the structure of major
plot points, and while this does
force the viewer to experience
every facet of the horrifying case,
it also ends up almost depersonal-
izing the family as each new piece
of information is presented in the
same way as the last. It’s easy to
become emotionally numb to the
barrage of tormenting twists,
and there’s little room to breathe
between the concentration of
impactful scenes, detracting from
the
harrowing
performances
from Ilan’s parents and sisters.
It’s Ilan’s mother, Ruth Halimi
(Zabou Breitman, “The First Day
of the Rest of Your Life”), who
reclaims the film’s humanity with
bookended direct addresses to the
audience. While the film seems
to lose its focus in the middle and
edge into the realm of crime dra-
mas, these moments of vulner-
able honesty effectively bring the
emphasis back on Ilan’s impact on
the French-Jewish community
and reminds its audience that this
high-intensity story isn’t a trick
for the screen, it’s an attempt to
capture the truth of unbelievable
real life events. Although Ilan is
seen throughout the film dur-
ing his imprisonment, we know
little about him and are left to
understand his character through
the eyes of his family as they
simultaneously fight for his life
and mourn the loss of their son,
brother and friend. Because of
this, the film’s success hinges on
our ability to connect with those
most invested in his survival.
After watching the story evolve
from the family’s initial and
very personal shock to the mas-
sive riots against anti-Semitic
crimes, the appearance of Ruth
at the open and close of the story
allows viewers to re-contextual-
ize the events they have watched
be blown to epic proportions,
keeping the story from becom-
ing commoditized on screen and
retain its humanity.
B+
24 Days
State Theater
New Light Films
Forces the
viewer to
experience the
story.