ACROSS
1 “Stopping By
Woods on a
Snowy Evening”
rhyme scheme
5 Govt. org. with a
“Safety
Compass” blog
9 Under-the-tree
pile
14 Silly smile,
maybe
15 Snack with a
white center
16 Garnish
17 “Gotcha!”
19 Brawl
20 Menlo Park
initials
21 Those, in Oaxaca
22 __ mater
23 Gear on a tour
bus
24 “Gotcha!”
28 They blow off
steam
30 Bugged by a bug
31 Like a twisted
remark
32 Within: Pref.
33 Hive-dwelling
35 “Gotcha!”
41 College
declaration
42 Feminizing finish
44 Icarus, to
Daedalus
47 Snooze
48 Add to a
scrapbook, say
51 Significance of
this puzzle’s
circled letters
(gotcha again!)
54 Map rtes.
55 Drop-off point
56 Charlie’s fourth
wife
57 201, on a
monument
58 Carillon sounds
60 Today’s
“Gotcha!”
62 Cookout spot
63 Willing
64 “A __ for Emily”:
Faulkner short
story
65 Not in a slump?
66 “Iliad” deity
67 Stops
equivocating

DOWN
1 Stir up
2 Military
equipment

3 Designated park
trail
4 DiFranco of folk
rock
5 Greets
wordlessly
6 Three-note chords
7 Have a feeling
8 Peat source
9 Leg, to a film noir
detective
10 Model of
perfection
11 Trail
12 Seismometer
detection
13 Duplicitous
18 Self-produced
recording,
perhaps
25 Slangy golf term
for nervousness
while putting,
with “the”
26 Everything-in-
the-pot stew
27 __ Bator
29 Mary Oliver
output
33 __ Lingus
34 Babushka’s
denial
36 Actress
Kaczmarek with
seven Emmy
nominations

37 Ventura 
County resort
city
38 Keystone force
39 Kid-sized ice
cream order
40 Price per can,
e.g.
43 Stores in a farm
tower
44 Vast grassland
45 “Goodness
gracious”
46 Cancel out

48 “I have the worst
luck!”
49 John Denver’s
“__ Song”
50 Corporate
emblem
52 Dig find
53 Wall Street
phrase
59 Pink-elephant
spotter,
stereotypically
60 Ottoman bigwig
61 To and __

By Daniel Nierenberg
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/01/15

04/01/15

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

THERE’S A
CROSSWORD
ON THIS
PAGE.

DO
IT.

HAPPY
WEDNESDAY!

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6A — Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

PC MUSIC

A photo of the lovely Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren ... April Fools!
PC Music is colorful, 
bizarre, kawaii pop

By DANIEL SAFFRON

For The Daily

PC Music, a mysterious, Lon-

don-based label founded by A.G. 
Cook in 2013, deviates from all 
recognizable paths. The label has 
received its fair share of encomia 
and vituperation. Easily pass-offa-
ble as innocuous consumer pop, 
the label’s self-aware, sarcastic 
affectation hints at quite the oppo-
site. Many critics have approached 
the goings-on over at PC Music 
with a high level of scrutiny, but 
it’s not a label that should be taken 
too seriously; it does better with a 
grain of salt and some chaser.

The music itself is hyper-digital, 

Kawaii-influenced synthpop with 
a heavily treble-skewed auditory 
range, high-pass filters aplenty and 
amphetaminic rhythms. The lyrics 
are peculiar, awkward and obtuse. 
Hannah Diamond’s “Every Night” 
awkwardly relates the familiar 
first moments in a romance: “I 
know you like the way that I look / 
And it looks like I like you too / You 
know I do / I like the way you like 
/ That I like how you look / And 
you like me too.” The rhythmic 
phrasing is choppy and noticeably 
quantized, but behind the heavy 
digital influence is a seductive 
candor. The vocals resembling 
Alvin and the Chipmunks are 
perhaps 
the 
most 
distinctive 

aspect of the genre. They are high-
pitched, digitally manipulated and 

Britishly accented. You either love 
it or hate it.

While the music is immedi-

ately unsettling, exposure uncov-
ers an insidious infectiousness. It 
can be likened to Crystal Palace. 
A vehicle for intoxication, it is to 
be stomached with a grimace, but 
the more you consume, the more 
powerful the effects become. 
The label’s bizarre, refined aes-
thetic sets it and its artists apart 
and makes it worth the atten-
tion it receives. To start, the art-
ists under the label bear Hello 
Kitty names like easyFun, Prin-
cess Bambi, GFOTY (Girlfriend 
of the Year) and Lipgloss Twins. 
SOPHIE, while not on the label, 
is an act often associated with it. 
The SOPHIE himself is male, but 
often has female DJs perform as 
him at his shows. Strange fashion 
taste features heavily in the per-
sona of the artists. In an interview 
with VICE, Hannah Diamond says 
she likes “all white and … veer(s) 
towards pink and black print and 
trainers,” while GFOTY likens her 
style to “a pink onesie covered in 
Swarovski crystals with loads of 
money coming out the pockets and 
Ugg boots.” It is uncertain how 
much of what GFOTY says is gen-
uine and how much she says with 
a wink. Her grandiose persona 
seems to be a loud commentary on 
female sexuality and club-culture 
customs. Listen to “Friday Night” 
and you’ll get the idea – it’s hard to 

take at face value.

The artists behind the PC label 

are easily cast off as preternaturally 
enigmatic, but attractive, human 
qualities come to light in some of 
the artists’ interviews. In a video 
on her YouTube channel, Hannah 
Diamond tells us about her music’s 
focus on failed romance. I have 
to admit, I developed something 
of a crush for Hannah Diamond 
after watching the video. Her cute, 
innocent personality is somehow 
both in keeping and incongruous 
with her focused artistic presence. 
Diamond 
studied 
fashion 

communication and styling and 
is the Diamond behind image-
making duo Diamond Wright, 
who are responsible for creating 
promotional images for many of 
the label’s artists.

The label most recently released 

a music video for effervescent “art-
ist” QT. QT, also referred to as 
drinkQT, is not a person, but rath-
er an “energy elixir,” which the 
website describes as a “5-calorie 
… drink manufactured to contrib-
ute to upward shine, vertical con-
nectivity and personal growth.” 
The music video for QT’s “Hey 
QT,” made with collaborators 
A.G. Cook and SOPHIE, dropped 
last Wednesday and is part of the 
mass-marketing ad campaign for 
the “sparkling future pop sensa-
tion.” Confused yet? You’re not the 
only one.

The video capitalizes on every-

thing that makes PC PC; its visual 
aspects are in no way an exception. 
The video takes place in a drinkQT 
“testing facility” and features 
a 
copper-haired, 
short-banged 

woman – the spokesperson/face 
behind QT. She is initially clad 
in hygienic hospital whites and 
maintains an uninvolved, laconic 
disposition as she gets ready to 
experience drinkQT. When the 
chorus drops and the elixir takes 
over, the whites are traded for a 
tight, reflectively pink dress and 
her slow movements fall to the 
wayside of digitally sped-up dance 
moves. Boy oh boy, if she doesn’t 
look like she’s having a ball, I don’t 
know who is. It must be QT’s doing, 
as we are incessantly reminded, 
she can feel QT’s “hands on (her) 
body.” The visuals do well to cap-
ture the music’s exuding pinkness 
and the artificial dance moves 
complement the pitched up vocals.

Everything about QT hints at 

its being a mockery of the heav-
ily ad-influenced pop industry. 
The whole label, which frequently 
refers to its music as pop, seems a 
sardonic caricature of the indus-
try. The “Hey QT” music video 
reminds us that pop artists them-
selves aren’t treated all too much 
differently than the latest energy 
drink and vice versa. PC Music 
is absurd and nightmarish in a 
bubble gum and candy canes type 
of way, but the label’s approach to 
music production and its heavy 
emphasis on image is not any 
stranger than the traditional pop 
approach; it only takes PC’s jarring 
music to bring it to light.

I’ve come to develop a taste 

for PC Music. It’s not musi-
cally groundbreaking, but it is 
definitely the first synth pop 
that I get down without dry 
heaves. Much has been written 
about the happenings over at 
PC Music, and it seems pretty 
universal that no one is entirely 
certain what exactly to think 
about it. I sure don’t. The two-
year-old label has yet to receive 
widespread notoriety, but as the 
fan base grows and the artists 
develop, it should be interesting 
to see what comes of this motley 
crew of London artists.

Poor performances 
and directing mar 
historical drama

By REBECCA LERNER 

Daily Arts Writer

“Serena,” 
starring 
Bradley 

Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, 
is a film Hollywood wants you 
to forget about. 
It is, on all pos-
sible levels, an 
aching 
disap-

pointment. The 
failure is the 
fault 
of 
both 

the 
lackluster 

performance 
from 
two 
of 

America’s 
most buzzed about actors and 
Oscar-winning Danish director 
Susanne Bier, who has proved 
that she can do better. Worst of 
all, “Serena” cheaply reproduces 
Ron Rash’s 2008 novel full of 
vital characters, issues that make 
an audience gasp and think and 
smash them into flat, trite ver-
sions of themselves.

The movie begins in 1929 with 

sweeping views of the North 
Carolina timber business. It is a 
place that would be lost without 
lumber tycoon George Pember-
ton (Bradley Cooper, “American 
Sniper”) and his superhero com-
plex. He must routinely save his 
men from broken equipment 
and an increasingly environ-
mentally 
conscious 
Congress 

that wants to halt his destruc-
tion of the Appalachian forests 
to create a National Park. After 
casually impregnating Rachel, 
(Ana Ularu, “A Very Unsettled 
Summer”) a local teenage girl, 
he leaves and happens to meet 
Serena (Jennifer Lawrence, “The 
Hunger Games”). She rides into 
the movie in slow motion on a 
white horse. Serena’s personal-
ity does not enter her own story 
until her future husband chases 
her on horseback and allows the 
third sentence he says to be, “I 
think we should be married.”

According to the jumbled and 

awkward sex scenes intended to 
illustrate their blossoming love, 
Serena 
accepts 
Pemberton’s 

proposal before heading back 
to 
North 
Carolina. 
George 

introduces her as his equal to 
his crew and his right-hand 
man Buchanan (David Dencik, 
“The Girl with the Dragon 
Tattoo”). At first, Serena shows 
no qualms about taking charge 
in the camp, proving herself as 
she insists on training an eagle 
to hunt the rattlesnakes that 
terrorize the men and directing 
them 
to 
more 
efficiently 

cut 
lumber. 
Serena 
quickly 

proves herself to be “the real 
pistol” that George introduced 
her as – when people in the 
camp threaten to expose the 
Pemberton’s 
shady 
financial 

records, she shows no hesitation 
about ordering the murders of 
anyone in the camp for the good 
of the company.

After a miscarriage, however, 

Serena learns she will not be 
able to bear children and angrily 
watches the way George cares 
for his and Rachel’s bastard son. 
With the help of her clairvoyant 
one-handed henchman Galloway 
(Rhys Ifans, “The Amazing Spi-
der-Man”) she determines that the 
child must be killed to save their 
marriage and the rest of the movie 

is a tangled race against insanity.

Aside from the stilted dialogue 

and the fact that the audience 
must constantly guess what quirky 
accent Bradley Cooper is going to 
try next, the film is unsatisfying 
in a far more important way. 
The women are given one or two 
personality traits without enough 
backstory to justify the emphasis 
on these traits. Lawrence seems 
afraid to play Serena to her full 
murderous glory, as the protagonist 
of Ron Rash’s novel is the coldest, 
baddest bitch around. But through 
her shift from a confident capitalist 
to a baby-crazy psycho with little 
explanation, there is an artificial 
softness added to her coldness. 
Because of the director’s fear of a 
truly inhospitable and aloof female 
character, they ruin her.

While there are gorgeous 

scenes of Czechoslovakia and 
both actors are dazzling in 
their Depression-era apparel, 
physical beauty is not enough to 
save “Serena.” The unjustified 
lunacy of the film is made even 
more unbearable by the possi-
bility of what could have been. 
Rash provided a solid novel 
with intriguing characters that 
were understandable in their 
madness, but they are carica-
tured on screen as condensed 
and dull versions of themselves. 
“Serena” deserves better.

FILM REVIEW 
Dull ‘Serena’ not 
worth the wait

D

Serena

Streaming 
Online

Magnolia Pictures
MAGNOLIA PICTURES

This is a screenshot from classic American romance ‘Casablanca’ ... April Fools!

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

