4B — Thursday, November 5, 2015
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
CONCERT REVIEW
It’s not too late
for Norah Jones
Jones disappoints
at Michigan
Theater show
By ADAM DEPOLLO
Managing Arts Editor
I wrote my last full-blown con-
cert review almost exactly one
year before the one that you’re
currently reading, shortly after
I saw L.A. producer/musical
savant Flying Lotus play in front
of a full house at the Royal Oak
Music Theater.
That show came about a
month after he dropped his atom
bomb of a jazz/hip-hop/electron-
ica-fusion album You’re Dead! to
near universal critical acclaim,
and his performance that night
was — and continues to be — the
only live musical event that has
compelled me to start openly
weeping (while sober, no less)
from pure audiovisual stupefac-
tion. In fact, my aesthetic sensi-
bilities were so hyper-stimulated
that I felt the need to put things
in my review like “Flying Lotus is
one of those artists … who seems
to have reached as nearly as one
can, however fleetingly, to per-
fection,” or that “I experienced
something uncanny, something
that I’m not sure I have the liter-
ary wherewithal to articulate.”
The fact that I finished the
review shows, I think, that I had
a bit more writerly panache than
I was willing to own up to (so
much so that I actually used the
phrase “literary wherewithal”
non-ironically), but I definitely
wasn’t just stringing together a
series of artistically-embellished
critical
exaggerations,
either.
Yes, I committed the mortal sin
of referring to a piece of art as
“perfect,” but, toward the end
of the review, I made a very
important qualification of that
term which, I think, excuses the
transgression: “perfection is a
very different thing from being
flawless.” Flying Lotus was per-
fect, in other words, because he
possessed that irrational, quasi-
magical ability “to reconfigure
flaws and mistakes into a work-
able whole, shoring up the gaps
with his own innovations,” to
effortlessly weave what would be
errors in any other context into
a new musical logic of his own
invention
Now, the reason I’m bringing
up Flying Lotus and my review
from last year is that, believe
it or not, I learned that defini-
tion of “perfect” from listening
to Norah Jones. Yes, that Norah
Jones — the one whose name you
can’t hear without having a venti
Pumpkin Spice Latte™ violently
erupt through the walls of your
subconscious.
Back in 2002 — before a
decade of aggressive Starbuck-
sification made it impossible to
publicly enjoy anything warm,
mid-tempo or acoustic without
being considered an agent of
the counter-revolution — Norah
Jones was occupying a niche
which bore certain striking simi-
larities to the one Flying Lotus
is inhabiting right now in 2015.
Her debut album Come Away
With Me was a firm and entirely
unexpected wake-up nudge for
the genres it straddled, picked
apart and stitched back together
into an expertly knitted, toasty
quilt of American popular music.
It reminded jazz that people
under the age of 60 would still
pay money to hear a dimin-
ished chord if you dusted it off
and bought it a new coat, and it
reminded pop, folk and bluegrass
that you could jam more than
one feeling into a song when you
actually used all twelve of the
notes in the octave. Admittedly,
the subdued piano, jazz brushes
and husky singing that serve as
Jones’s calling cards don’t com-
pel you to get off your ass in the
same way Flying Lotus’s synthe-
sizers and chunky-smooth drum
samples do, but you can’t help
but walk away from You’re Dead!
or Come Away With Me with the
feeling that all is not lost in the
world. They’re musical remind-
ers that dead ends are man-made,
and whether you tear down a
wall or build yourself a staircase,
with enough vision and technical
skill you can always find a way to
keep going forward. They might
not be flawless, but they’re new,
and that’s as close as music can
get to perfect.
The
problem
with
Norah
Jones, though, is that somewhere
in the post-Come Away With Me
hype, she got lost in the maze. It’s
hard to say why that is — maybe
it was her old-fashioned humil-
ity and common decency (after
sweeping the Grammies in 2003,
she told Katie Couric “I felt like
I went to somebody else’s birth-
day party and I ate all their cake.
Without anybody else getting a
piece”), maybe it was the Star-
bucksification (when your Blue
Note record sells 26 million cop-
ies in the 21st century, it’s pretty
hard to justify switching things
up), or maybe the creative juju
wasn’t really there in the first
place (Jones only had two-and-a-
half writing credits on that first
album, after all, and her later
discography is almost all original
tunes) — but with the exception
of a couple of brief bright spots
like “Chasing Pirates” from The
Fall, Jones has been banging her
head against the same jazz-pop-
fill-in-the-blank-fusion wall that
she and her cowriters built back
in 2002.
Now, depending on how we
want to think about Norah
Jones, that might not necessar-
ily be a problem. If she’s just a
chanteuse to you, just an incred-
ibly
talented
lounge
singer
whose skills far exceed the con-
fines of the genre she’s work-
ing in, then she can rest on her
laurels and spend the rest of her
days giving performances like
the one she did at The Michigan
Theater on Monday night. That
is, of course, if you prefer your
music to be of the anesthetic art
object variety, and your idea of a
good night involves going slack-
jawed in front of a beautiful
voice with no emotion behind
it. But the fact that an audience
member shushed me for hum-
ming along to a Puss N Boots
song that included the lyrics
“Hey, you, don’t tell me what to
do” suggests where that idea of
fun is headed. (It’s fascism).
I won’t talk too much more
about Norah Jones’s perfor-
mance on Monday because,
again, you can’t argue with
the anesthetic art object. It’s
a dead-end that doesn’t even
want to be a way out, and I’d
rather spend my time looking
for the artists who are swinging
sledgehammers around.
The thing is, though, that
Norah Jones could be one of
those artists. She was back in
2002 — that’s why she won all
those Grammies and sold 26
million records. That’s why
people love her, and that’s why
seeing her fade into the back-
ground behind her own band
is a damn shame. You can do
perfect Norah Jones, and I just
hope that on your next album
and your next tour, you can
start doing it again.
AMANDA ALLEN/ Daily
Norah Jones performs at the Michigan Theater on Monday.
FILM REVIEW
‘Our Brand’ is a
flaming car wreck
By RACHEL RICHARDSON
For The Daily
“No one watches a car race to
see who wins, only who crashes
and goes up in flames.” Sandra
Bullock’s
(“Grav-
ity”) char-
acter, Jane
Bodine,
fittingly
known as
“Calami-
ty,” relates
this quote
to politics,
and how most people just enjoy
seeing who crashes and burns,
not who wins. Ironically, this
quote also describes most of
“Our Brand Is Crisis:” a series
of crashes and burns.
Hopelessly struggling in the
Bolivian polls, Pedro Castillo
(Joaquim de Almeida, “Fast
Five”)
—
the
fictionalized
version of 2002 presidential
candidate Sánchez de Lozada
— hires an American campaign
management
team.
Bodine
leads
the
team
as
their
strategist.
She
reluctantly
decides to join the team when
she learns that her old political
rival, Pat Candy (Billy Bob
Thornton,
“Entourage”),
is
working
for
the
opposing
candidate, Victor Rivera (Louis
Arcella, “The Family”). The
politics quickly turn dirty,
and Bodine doesn’t hesitate
to carry out illegal action to
ensure Castillo wins.
The first noticeable sign of
the film’s poor quality is its
horrendous
cinematography,
which is best indicated by the
cringe
-inducing use of slow
motion. Instead of enhancing
scenes
by
increasing
the
emotion or tension, it’s used
during bland moments, like
when Bodine is simply walking
out of her office — suddenly
her walking is slowed, but
she resumes her normal pace
the second she steps outside.
This would have made more
sense thematically had it been
preceded by an inspirational
speech
or
dramatic
breakthrough with Castillo.
Along with the excessive
visual effects, the movie is
cluttered
with
scenes
that
add zero relevant substance.
For some absurd reason, the
director felt it necessary to
yet again highlight Bodine’s
irrational
decision
making.
Watching Bullock moon Rivera
and his team after overtaking
them in a race through the
jungle
could
have
possibly
been comical, but it completely
misses the mark as far as
humorous moments go.
The one positive aspect,
though
far
from
a
saving
grace, is the character dynam-
ic between Bodine and Ben
(Anthony Mackie, “The Aveng-
ers: Age of Ultron”). This adds
a sense of realism to the other-
wise far-fetched movie. They
push each other to be the best
and eventually come to under-
stand each other on a deeper
level than typical coworkers.
When Bodine jumps out of the
car during the last riot, which
indicates her choosing to stay
and combat corruption running
rampant throughout Bolivia,
Ben understands her choice
without having to exchange
any words — he simply nods
and says, “OK.”
The other members of Cas-
tillo’s hired campaign crew
only add to the clutter. While
private investigator LeBlanc
(Zoe Kazan, “The Walker”)
and former State Department
member Nell (Ann Dowd, “The
Leftovers”) fall to the back-
ground, TV ad director Buck-
ley (Scott McNairy, “Halt and
Catch Fire”) sorely sticks out as
the obnoxious, condescending
asshole. After the first few sur-
prisingly comical comments,
the viewer might reasonably
want to punch him in the face.
Buckley spends so much time
criticizing others that he is
utterly useless in forwarding
Castillo’s campaign.
The puerile image of Bullock
falling down the stairs in
this
ill-conceived
dramedy
perfectly displays how this
film is a major downfall in
her acting career. So, if you’re
looking
for
entertainment
this weekend, you might have
a better time reading about
the 2002 Bolivian election on
Wikipedia than watching “Our
Brand Is Crisis.”
D+
Our Brand
is Crisis
Warner Bros.
Rave and Quality 16
WARNER BROS.
Miss Disagreeability.
MY FIRST FAVORITE ALBUM
The West Coast
sorcery of Dr. Dre
By SHAYAN SHAFII
Daily Arts Writer
This week, Daily Music Writ-
ers are looking back on the first
albums they ever loved. Today,
Shayan Shafii remembers Dr.
Dre’s Chronic 2001.
When I was in the ninth
grade, my parents took me and
my sister on a trip to Los Ange-
les (affectionately referred to as
“Tehrangeles” within the Per-
sian community) to kick it with
some distant family-friends. I
neither knew who they were nor
cared, as I was only interested in
getting the hell out of West Vir-
ginia. My hometown, Charleston,
is a small working class “city” of
about 50,000. One of those plac-
es where the best place to eat is
a greasy breakfast joint called
“Tudor’s Biscuit World.” I was
13 years old at the time, and my
computer was basically the only
portal I had into the developed
world.
Right at the cusp of those
rebellious teenage years, the trip
proved to be pivotal in putting
me on to urban youth culture. No
memory captures this more than
when a family friend took me on
a car ride with his CD of choice:
Dr. Dre’s seminal Chronic 2001.
I’ll be honest, I understood little
to nothing of what Kurupt and
Hittman were rapping about on
“Xxplosive,” but my friend didn’t
stop laughing for three minutes.
Whatever this sorcery of “West
Coast rap” was, I couldn’t wait to
bring its fuckery back to the tran-
quil suburbs of West Virginia.
Upon my return, I developed
an interest in digging up the
grimiest, filthiest music that
South Central L.A. had to offer.
Chronic 2001 was first on my list,
and what followed were several
years of rap-inspired shenani-
gans from hilariously out-of-
place white kids in a largely Black
high school. I couldn’t quite
pinpoint why the music was so
appealing to me, but I continued
to listen despite missing every
reference and innuendo.
I remember speculating that
Xzibit’s line on “What’s The Dif-
ference,” “My style is like a reac-
tion from too much acid,” might
have actually been a chemistry
joke. Almost every other lyric
was a reference to NWA, whom I
had only recognized from shirts
worn by local mall rats. I never
cuffed my khakis until Dr. Dre
gave me the idea on the hook of
“Still D.R.E.” Point being, this
album turned me into the classic
suburban rap fan but set me up to
learn more about the culture if I
was willing to put in the time.
Sentimental value aside, 2001
was an ideal starting point,
boasting features from legends
like Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Nate
Dogg and Six-Two. I went on to
consume entire discographies at
a time, starting from the featured
artists and eventually spread-
ing out to whatever popped up
in YouTube comments sections.
Ensuing weekends were wasted
away playing FIFA in my friend’s
basement while running through
old Snopp Dogg records.
Where the suburbs deprived
us of any real culture, the Inter-
net and West Coast rap gave
us something to look into, to
almost stand behind. Obviously
none of us were from Crenshaw,
but feeling the need to clear up
the misconceptions surround-
ing the culture was more than
enough reason to keep listen-
ing.
AFTERMATH
He has a symmetrical face. And a sharp haircut. Have a great day, Dr. Dre!