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!

