The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts Monday, April 13, 2015 — 5A ACROSS 1 Software versions that probably have bugs 6 Deer sir? 10 Long-running TV forensic series 13 Reason for some food recalls 14 Tractor brand 15 Gavel sound 16 King of ragtime 18 California’s Santa __ Mountains 19 2,000 pounds 20 Lee in the frozen foods section 21 Gives off 23 Presley film set in Sin City 26 Noisy insect 29 Seuss’ “Horton __ a Who!” 30 In any way 31 Artist Francisco 33 Right-angled pipes 36 Penalty flag thrower 37 Sincere 40 Promise to repay, for short 41 The “E” in FEMA: Abbr. 43 Fez and fedora 44 Speaks scratchily 46 “Sour grapes” storyteller 48 Multi-room accommodations 49 One chasing outlaws for money 53 Domed home 54 Zip, as a Ziploc 55 Static jolt 58 Bikini top 59 Counter wipers, or what the starts of 16-, 23- and 49-Across are 63 Lanai wreath 64 Preface, briefly 65 Yeas and nays 66 Mass. clock setting 67 Mix, as a salad 68 Make into a statute DOWN 1 Unsurpassed, or surpass 2 Danish shoe company 3 Animated character 4 Mountain hgt. 5 Isn’t used, as machinery 6 Leaf under a petal 7 Phone book no. 8 Tycoon Onassis 9 Swiss convention city 10 Site for online bargain hunters 11 Legendary sleigh rider 12 “Not interested” 14 Animated kid explorer 17 Morning cup 22 For a __ pittance 23 Actor Kilmer 24 “Now I remember” 25 Caspian and Black 26 Handle with __ 27 Gossip column couple 28 17-Down with hot milk 31 Boardroom diagram 32 Toronto’s prov. 34 More than trot 35 Figure (out), slangily 38 Shout between ships 39 Soul mate 42 Nevada city 45 Word before base or ball 47 “Cut that out!” 48 Fantasy baseball datum 49 Holy Scriptures 50 Fairy tale baddies 51 Password creators 52 Fictional sleuth Wolfe 55 Second of four rhyming Greek letters 56 Actor Baldwin 57 Hissed “Hey!” 60 “Is that __?”: “Are you declining?” 61 Pair in a qt. 62 Took first place By Ray Hedrick and C.C. 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Modest rates ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT now available close to Ross & Law School 1 year lease May 2015 ‑ April 2016 $875 utilities included. Call: (734)834‑5021 WORK ON MACKINAC Island This Summer – Make lifelong friends. The Is‑ land House Hotel and Ryba’s Fudge Shops are looking for help in all areas be‑ ginning in early May: Front Desk, Bell Staff, Wait Staff, Sales Clerks, Kitchen, Baristas. Housing, bonus, and discounted meals. (906) 847‑7196. www.theisland‑ house.com FOR RENT PARKING SUMMER EMPLOYMENT SERVICES Harriet is made for your summer playlist By DANIEL SAFFRON For The Daily As the weather here in Ann Arbor changes from rosy-nosed cold and gonadally harsh to sweat- er shedding, sunglass prompting and frisbee conducive, we all begin to get frantic over what tunes are going to usher in that oh-so cherished oh-so missed summer lovin’. There’s nowhere better to look than perpetually summer- suspended Los Angeles, where up-and-coming band Harriet promises us some of those syrupy sweet summer feels with a recent EP that makes us crave beaches, sun and aloe vera. Harriet’s members are young – Alex Casnoff, the singer and for- mer member of bands Dawes and PAPA, is 27 and Henry Kwapis, the drummer, is only 21. However their sound is on the verge of maturity. The band has rock band set up, but is leaps and bounds from your tra- ditional rock sound. Distant from your typical anything, Harriet EP is a cattle prod to the backside of palatable pop and radio-approved anthems. The band’s aura isn’t immediately placeable; Kwapis told me that the band was never a “genre project,” and Casnoff told me that he “(doesn’t) like when you can immediately place your finger on what (a song) is.” What is spe- cial about Harriet is that they’ve managed to earnestly represent their unique tastes, sounds and self-concept in an industry that emphasizes variations on hack- neyed cookie-cutter archetypes. Harriet EP, only four tracks in length, goes many different plac- es and capitalizes on an eclectic soundscape. “Irish Margaritas,” the first track, is fun and dance- able, but under the ebullient synths, excited drums, chirpy guitar licks and pinball bass lines hides the tale of the narrator’s Gaelic-Mexican-beverage-influ- enced struggle with lost romance; “One more drink and I might show up at your doorstep knowing fully well the probability that he’s inside / One more drink and I might tap you on the shoulder tell you ‘baby though it’s over and I know that that’s a lie,” Casnoff sings. It’s the kind of song that starts in-car aux cord arguments with me and my mother – not for everyone – but its concurrent sarcastic and heart wrenching qualities are something that everyone can appreciate. “Up Against It” and “Burbank,” the second and third tracks, are different from “Irish Margaritas,” but are similar to each other. Both are reverberant, ruminative and emotionally viscous. These two songs cast the band’s songwriting prowess in a felicitous spotlight. At once sad and romantic, the album’s middle tracks hypnotize with a rose-pedals-and-red-wine seduction – tracks suited both for make outs and introspection on an open highway. The last track “Ten Steps” is somewhere between “Irish Margaritas” and “Burbank.” It’s exciting and diligently senti- mental, with some of the EP’s most powerful lyrics. As a whole, the lyrics on the EP are artful and resplendent, but evocatively casual, pupil-dilating and shocking at times. In “Ten Steps,” Casnoff sings, “If you’ve been killed again / My body is still physical when I’m asleep / I hear you breathe it in / I am detective you are my crime scene,” which has the conflicting sentimental- ity of a teddy bear wearing latex gloves. In “Burbank,” he sings “We were in love / The cigarette / That held her lips / The pussy wet,” in a way that isn’t the slightest bit naïve or derogatory – your grand- ma would ask for a Kleenex if she heard it. Casnoff described his songs as “first person monologues from characters that aren’t always (him) … all who deal with similar kinds of things, maybe in different ways … (like) anxiety and not being able to figure shit out.” While being a monologue, each track feels like an intimate beer-and-barstool conversation with Alex. The last vital component to the Harriet admixture is the eyebrow skewing music videos. “Irish Margaritas” ’s video cen- ters around a weird plastic lime literally placed on a pedestal and surrounded by TIKI torches and sparklers. In “Burbank,” a porn- star-moustached, Kenny-G-haired man assumes Casnoff’s role as the band’s singer, while Casnoff mar- ries a stripper in front of a vending machine. The videos, which Cas- noff likens to short movies, provide further insight into each track’s elusive soliloquist. I’ve followed Harriet since its inception three years ago. Now signed with Harvest Records, owned by Capitol, the band has seen some radical changes over the years with a generally positive trend. Harriet EP is a precursor to the band’s full album, which the members and I both hope to see out this summer. If you’re a fan of well- written, inventive music or you sim- ply like to be that person who knows a chill band that your friends don’t, Harriet deserves a listen. I look for- ward to their full album release and will be keeping Harriet on my radar; I suggest you do this same. HARVEST RECORDS It’s hip to be square. Obioma to read debut at Literati Nigerian novelist will present first novel Tuesday By COSMO PAPPAS Daily Arts Writers Sitting at the corner of Division St. and Washington St., Literati Bookstore has taken great effort to provide the infrastructure for a thriving literary culture in Ann Arbor. This Tuesday, they will wel- come debut nov- elist Chigozie Obioma through their “Fiction at Literati” series, the comple- ment to their “Poetry at Literati” series. A Helen Zell Fellow of Creative Writing, Obioma was born in Nigeria, stud- ied in Cyprus and lived in Tur- key. Obioma will give a reading to commemorate his first novel, “The Fishermen,” to be released through Little, Brown and Com- pany the same day. “I wanted to write this story, I was inspired to write this story about a close-knit family,” Obio- ma said in an interview with The Michigan Daily. “What is it that can come between them and bring destruction and destroy the unity of the family? And not just a family, but any entity at all.” Obioma’s novel is, as Helon Habila of The Guardian describes in his review of the book, “a Bil- dungsroman,” a coming-of-age story. The four brothers in the novel must navigate their lives after their father departs for a job transfer. They pick up fishing as they lose their sense of routine in the absence of their father’s dis- ciplinary guidance. But shortly after being “discovered by their neighbor who tells their moth- er,” “they meet the local oddball, Abulu, who has the power of prophecy, and who predicts that Ikenna, the oldest, will be killed by one of his brothers: a fisher- man,” Habila says. “It is from this simple, almost mythological con- ceit that Chigozie Obioma’s debut novel grows, gaining complexity and power as it rises to its heart- breaking climax.” “The Fishermen” has been received positively for the ways that it balances many different projects. Describing the book as one that works with elements of “the traditional English novel form with the oral storytelling tradi- tion” against an Aristotelian tragic arc, Habila celebrates the parallel dramas of Obioma’s book. Obioma described his inter- est in “parallel universes” and the way that “human beings (exist) at the same time as spirits and these ethereal creatures.” Habila reads Obioma’s novel both as a Bildungsroman and as a sort of allegory of the post- independence history of Nigeria. Obioma seeks out this “both-and” play of narrative in both form and content, citing influences as diverse as Greek myth and epic, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Hardy, William Shakespeare, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Günter Grass and Chinua Achebe. Obioma looks to Achebe (1930-2013), the late preeminent Nigerian writer and one of the most significant and widely read writers from Africa, as a writer from whom he learns about Igbo (a major ethnic group of Nigeria) traditions, philoso- phies and history. “What I have always been afraid of is people reading this book because they feel it is exotic to them, and content trumping form, you know, the beauty of writing,” Obioma said. “Largely, even in the translated form, in German, one thing everyone has unanimously agreed on is the beauty of the prose, and that is the aesthetics, the art of the book, which gives me joy because now somebody cannot say, ‘Oh, I am reading this one to understand Africa because I want to.’ You know, this is not why we read, that is not why I read.” Join Obioma this Tuesday in the Espresso Bar on the second floor of Literati to hear selections from his novel and his thoughts on his well- received, successful debut. ‘Daredevil’ dark, edgy By MATT BARNAUSKAS Daily Arts Wrtier The success Marvel has had in recent years is almost unprec- edented. With several blockbuster franchises, a flourishing cin- ematic universe and a couple TV shows under its belt, the com- pany has proven itself to be a dominant force. Now it enters the streaming game with Netflix’s newest series, “Daredevil.” The show stars Charlie Cox (“Boardwalk Empire”) as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer turned titular vigilante. “Daredevil” is probably the darkest product Marvel has produced to date. In its first four episodes, “Daredevil” questions the limits Murdock can go to as a vigilante and where the line is drawn between justice and vengeance. Set in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, “Daredevil” casts its city with little light. Shadows cover even the open areas in darkness as neon, harsh yellow and sterile blue lights evoke a neo-noir stylistic feel while capturing a comic book aes- thetic. Trying to bring light to the city are Murdock and his law part- ner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson, “Mockingjay: Part 1”), who have just started their own practice, with their first client being the framed Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll, “True Blood”). The three form a central trio of do-gooders. Foggy is comic relief but is com- petent in his own right next to the quiet Murdock. While Karen serves as little more than a damsel- in-distress in the first episode, the show quickly allows her to develop beyond her initial trauma as she starts investigating United Allied Construction – the company that tried to frame her after she found something she shouldn’t have. Murdock is also given a confi- dante, Claire (Rosario Dawson, “Sin City”), a nurse who patches him up after finding him laying wounded in a dumpster during the second episode. The relationship is the most challenging for Murdock. Claire has seen the good Murdock has performed in the form of the broken criminal victims of Dare- devil, yet she openly questions the measures he takes. Simultaneously a foil and confidante, Claire pro- vides needed interaction for Mur- dock in costume, humanizing his vigilante side, but challenging his extreme measures. Murdock is a tortured char- acter beneath his quiet visage. Blinded at a young age, Murdock learns from his boxer dad, Jack (John Patrick Hayden, “Blue Bloods”) that, “It ain’t how you hit the mat, it’s how you get up.” There’s a pride passed down from father to son in fighting for who you are, a strength and fatal flaw that claims the elder Murdock’s life when he refuses to take a dive during a boxing match. The same goes for Matt Mur- dock years later. As Daredevil, Murdock serves as an unstoppa- ble presence against the criminals that plague his city. This trans- lates into bone crushing, kinetic fight scenes that can be placed among the best on any TV show. Punches land hard, knives cut deep and no one goes down easy in “Daredevil.” This is no more apparent than in episode two’s climactic battle that harkens back to Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy.” Shot in nearly one take, a wound- ed Murdock enters a hallway occupied by two roomfuls of Rus- sian mobsters. At the end of the hallway is a door, and behind that door is a kidnapped boy. The fight is an exhausting brawl that tests the young superhero’s endurance. He leans against a wall, capturing a quick breather, before reenter- ing the fray of stumbling combat- ants. It’s the standout moment early in the series that combines a fantastic physical performance by Cox, expert direction by Phil Abraham (“Mad Men”), phenom- enal stunt work by coordinator Philip J. Silvera (“A Walk Among the Tombstones”) and Cox’s dou- ble Chris Brewster (“Thor: the Dark World”). Murdock, though, faces his greatest foe, Wilson Fisk, a.k.a Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio, “Full Metal Jacket”). The first three episodes are spent hyp- ing the character up, with one character impaling himself on a spike instead of facing the conse- quences of just saying his name. It’s ironic then that the first time the character is fully explored in episode four, “In the Blood,” he is seen at his most uncomfort- able, on a date with an art dealer (Ayelet Zurer, “Man of Steel”). In this setting, he is quiet and awk- ward, increasing the suspense about when his true colors will show. There’s a dread about when this character will erupt from his initially quiet disposition, and when he does D’Onofrio doesn’t disappoint. “Daredevil” is a dark medita- tion on the lengths a superhero can go before they cross the line physically and mentally. With strong performance and direction in its early episodes, this is defi- nitely a worthy tonal shift in the Marvel universe. A Daredevil Series Premiere Netflix EVENT PREVIEW TV REVIEW MUSIC NOTEBOOK Chigozie Obioma Readings April 14, 7 p.m. at Literati Bookstore Free