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Thursday, May 14, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS
MUSIC COLUMN
Shut up and listen to
‘Shut Up and Dance’
R
ock ‘n’ roll’s not dead. It’s
sitting right at number 2 on
the iTunes singles chart.
I’ll be the
first to admit
that I didn’t
see it coming.
Don’t get me
wrong, I liked
Walk the
Moon’s first
single, “Anna
Sun,” as much
as anybody. I’ve
always been
a huge fan of
The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc
Party and those other new wave
revivalists, so if a band can take
the characteristics of these bands
— huge choruses, disco-influenced
backbeats and rough lyrics about
“towns” and/or needing to get
out of them — and distill them
skillfully into a new four-minute
composition, my acceptance is
basically a given.
That said, I didn’t expect to
hear much more from Walk the
Moon after “Anna Sun.” It was one
of those huge songs that felt like a
big hit if you listened primarily to
the Alt Nation channel on Sirius
and drove around with friends
who’d sing along when it came on
that station. I put the track on my
iPod thinking that in a short time
I’d scroll across the title and it
would stick out like that guy who
wore a Mitt Romney mask to last
year’s Halloween party.
Then I heard “Shut Up and
Dance” when it was first released,
and it pretty much confirmed my
prediction. Bland guitar chords,
a catchy cookie-cutter chorus
and no signs of innovation — this
song wouldn’t last the rest of
the month. Bands come out with
new singles every day, and “Shut
Up and Dance” didn’t have what
it would take to avoid quickly
getting lost in the shuffle.
That was August 2014, and in
the subsequent seasons, Walk
the Moon slowly slipped out of
my consciousness. I didn’t listen
to the radio at school, and I got
caught up in other new releases —
very few of which were from rock
bands. I even, regretfully, deleted
“Anna Sun” off my iPod.
But, like the whispers of that
secret you knew no one would
ever find out about, “Shut Up and
Dance” came back to me. First
it was innocuous enough for me
to dismiss — I caught the closing
notes as I walked into a store, and
I picked it up from a passing car
on State Street. Then my Twitter
timeline seemed unusually
excited for Walk the Moon’s show
in Detroit back in April — an
interesting blip on my radar, but
not much more.
Finally, not long after the
concert, I go to a party and pretty
good music is playing, but nothing
out of the ordinary — the great
’00s nostalgia trips and the best
hits of this school year. Suddenly,
the choppy opening guitar notes
of “Shut Up and Dance” echo
around the room. I’m confused,
but people are dancing. Everyone
seems to know this song. And
everyone seems to love this song.
And everyone screams along to
the chorus, because why the hell
wouldn’t you scream along? After
way too much denial, I realize this
plain old rock song is a fucking hit.
Now, I stand by what I said
— “Shut Up and Dance” is a
cookie-cutter rock song. The four-
on-the-floor beat (God bless it), a
singer declaring “this woman is
my destiny” and a breakdown with
the inevitable audience-clapping
already inserted (genius!).
However, “Shut Up and Dance”
doesn’t work despite these clichés,
but because of how effectively
it executes them, and how great
it feels when you can dance and
sing along with them. That golden
drum beat conducts your body
and moves it exactly how it needs
to; those audience cues will just
ratchet up the anticipation and
make everyone’s hearts that much
more explosive when you hear
it live. And Nick Petricca sells
those lyrics with every molecule
of air that comes out of his mouth,
singing like he’s the first guy ever
to call a woman Juliet and fall in
love with her at first sight, like
he’s losing his virginity and falling
in love and getting married and
raising children all on that dark,
crowded, slippery discotheque
floor. And then that refrain just
tops it off. There’s no comeback to
“Shut up and dance with me!” If
you say anything in response to a
command that joyful and assured,
you’re a gutless asshole.
And even though I admit I was
wrong when I first judged the
song’s quality in the solitude of my
car, I still have no idea how “Shut
Up and Dance” made it to the
mainstream. This is a song that
came out last summer that’s finally
peaking and poised to take over
2015’s season of sunshine.
And it was an indie rock
song, of all things, from a band
with little previous pedigree or
name recognition. At the risk of
sounding curmudgeonly, right
now is kind of a dead period for
rock bands. Of course, plenty of
bands are making great music,
but it feels like ages since rock has
been a regular on Top-40 radio.
Hip hop, country and even EDM
have all earned well-deserved
greater relevance today.
That said, I still see rock
poking out here and there. I
hear it in music ostensibly made
for kids, like One Direction’s
“Little Black Dress” or Five
Seconds of Summer’s “She Looks
So Perfect.” (In fact, the girl of
“She Looks So Perfect” could
very well be the girl of “Shut
Up and Dance” before she got
a fake ID and traded in boys’
American Apparel underwear
for a backless dress and some
beat-up sneaks.) And I hear it
when our generation’s few alt-
rock classics suddenly surprise
a room, when “Mr. Brightside”
comes on and everyone gets
shocked and disoriented by
euphoria. I suppose “Shut Up and
Dance” just had the power and
resilience to beat at the walls of
the charts until it was heard, and
I suppose that even if rock keeps
getting topped on the pop charts,
it’ll always be around, waiting to
be heard. Because as soon as we
hear it, we know it’s our destiny.
Theisen is now reevaluating
All Time Low. To reminisce,
e-mail ajtheis@umich.edu
ADAM
THEISEN
‘Gotham’ lacks
development
TV REVIEW
By MATT BARNAUSKAS
Daily Arts Writer
Picking up in the middle of a gang
war, “Gotham” ’s Season 1 finale,
“All Happy Families Are Alike,”
brought an end
to the inaugu-
ral season of
Fox’s
uneven
Batman
pre-
quel. “Gotham”
shouldn’t have
gone beyond its
initial
16-epi-
sode order, but
with the show’s initial success, Fox
ordered extra episodes. This bloat-
ed an already thinly stretched sea-
son and created an underwhelming
finale.
I’m not sure if there’s a good
show in “Gotham,” but there are
solid elements that make its strug-
gles even more frustrating. The
escalating gang war between Car-
mine Falcone (John Doman, “The
Wire”) and Sal Maroni (David
Zayas, “Dexter”) was consistently
one of the strongest aspects of the
season. This mainly came from the
scheming, Iago-esque presence of
the future Penguin, Oswald Cob-
blepot (Robin Lord Taylor, “The
Walking Dead”). Cobblepot’s plans
for power and two-sided dealings
with the two crime lords grew
increasingly elaborate and were the
best-constructed plot lines for the
new series.
Fish Mooney’s (Jada Pinkett-
Smith, “Hawthorne”) return com-
plicates this conflict, introducing a
third party. Fish has been a prob-
lematic character for the show,
personifying several of its issues.
“Gotham” is a muddled show tonal-
ly — it tries to walk the line between
serious and campy but struggles at
several points. The show is more
successful when it leans to the grit-
tier tone within its gothic film noir
styling. However, Pinkett’s over-
the-top performance clashes with
the more grounded characters with
whom she shares screen time, such
as Doman’s Falcone.
Furthermore, Fish represents
“Gotham” ’s biggest struggle: form-
ing strong, independent characters,
particularly females. Too often in
“Gotham,” supporting characters
are merely objects in relation to
primary characters: They exist in
a vacuum without any real defini-
tion.
Take Barbara Kean (Erin Rich-
ards, “Breaking In”), Jim Gordon’s
(Ben McKenzie, “Southland”) for-
mer fiancée. Barbara serves only to
complicate the life of Gordon. Her
struggles aren’t her own, but rather
obstacles placed in Jim’s path. This
became a glaring issue in recent
episodes when Barbara became the
target of the serial killer, the Ogre
(Milo Ventimigilia, “Heroes”). She
became little more than a damsel
in distress for Gordon to save. Fur-
thermore, in the finale, Barbara
spends almost the entire episode
talking to Jim’s current girlfriend,
Leslie Thompkins (Morena Bac-
carin, “Homeland”) about Gordon.
In fact, Barbara is so defined by her
relationship with Jim that she tries
to kill Leslie, in an out-of-left-field
move that reveals how shallow the
writers have made the character.
The other issue in “All Happy
Families Are Alike” was the anti-
climactic feeling it had despite the
fact that there were big shifts in the
titular city’s power dynamic. Major
story elements were introduced
leading up to the episode, including
Gordon owing Cobblepot a favor,
but too many of these were resolved
with a wave of a hand and little nar-
rative buildup. Take the Gordon
/ Cobblepot deal — an opportu-
nity to truly test the moral fiber of
the nearly incorruptible detective
is wasted on just having Gordon
not leave Cobblepot for dead. The
chance to have Gordon aligned
with “the least worst option,” Fal-
cone, is dismissed because Falcone,
after a whole season of fighting for
dominance of the city, decides to
quit because of a sudden revelation
that crime isn’t the way to fix the
city.
If there is one thing “Gotham”
isn’t, it is subtle. Characters are
painted in broad strokes and the
obvious is often overstated. As
Cobblepot stands on a rooftop pro-
claiming, “I’m the king of Gotham”
this becomes readily apparent. As
“Gotham” moves forward, it must
become defter at developing char-
acters into actual people instead of
plot points and creating fully real-
ized narrative arcs that crawl to the
finish line.
C-
Gotham
Season Finale
Fox