The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, January 26, 2016 — 5

Chairlift won’t take 
risks on new ‘Moth’

By REGAN DETWILER

Daily Arts Writer

I think what Chairlift really 

wants from a review is for their 
’08 iPod nano commercial hit, 
“Bruises,” 
to 

not 
be 
men-

tioned. 
My 

apologies, 
guys. 
Every-

thing from the 
sheer nostalgia 
it elicits to its 
endearingly 
synth 
rhythm 

to its lyrics make mentioning it 
irresistible (I grabbed some fro-
zen strawberries so I could ice 
your bruising knees). It was that 
adorable indie hit before adorable 
indie hits were cool.

Moth is the New York duo’s 

most bright and upbeat release 
thus 
far. 
Singer 
Caroline 

Polachek’s vocals are similar to 
those of Marina Diamandis of 
Marina and the Diamonds, but 
the lyrics on this latest album 
don’t quite have that death-can-
dy depth of avant-pop artists like 
Marina. In fact, it’s difficult to 
place Chairlift in any genre right 
now. They’re avant-pop and/
or synth-pop, but Moth doesn’t 
quite place them into the either 
of those (fairly specific) catego-
ries. Those genres elicit artists 
like Marina, Lana, even Phanto-
gram or Grimes, if you want to 
go there. But Chairlift isn’t really 
anything like any of those.

They’re still stuck in the la-la 

land limbo of alt-pop artists like 
La Roux who only had one U.S. 
hit and never really got both 
feet off the ground. The album 
is good but not great. It’s good 
but not good. You can listen to 
Moth for something that will 
suffice. For example, two of 
the catchiest, most danceable 
tracks, “Ch-Ching” and “Moth 
to the Flame,” offer little con-
ceptual complexity beyond the 
content of their titles. Neither 
change your worldview, nei-
ther will change the way you 
perceive contemporary culture 
but they will allow you to main-
tain your reputation as someone 
who “likes good music.”

There is at least one track 

that gets me feeling, and it’s 
“Crying in Public.” While most 
of the songs on Moth have vague 
lyrics that come off as distant 
and impersonal — especially 
when paired with Chairlift’s 
characteristic 
technologized, 

synthey aesthetic — they get 

slow and deep on this track. 
The lyrics speak to tender and 
conflicting emotions of crying 
about and loving someone at the 
same time — crying because you 
love them. Polachek’s vocals 
also shine, coming out sinewy 
and clear.

But that’s only one song. 

While Moth has a few shining 
moments, the fact of the mat-
ter is Chairlift hasn’t put any-
thing out that tops their first 
album, Does You Inspire You, 
featuring “Bruises.” And their 
latest release is no exception. 
Their sound in ’08 was original, 
fresh and ahead of its time. Lyr-
ics spoke to social issues and 
gave considerable attention to 
critiquing 
the 
consumerism 

emerging in our country at the 
time, which has run rampant 
by now. On that first album 
they gave 4:45 to a song about 
how much garbage we produce. 
Track names included (you 
guessed it) “Garbage” and “Le 
Flying Saucer Hat.” Um, yes 
please. When I see “Ch-Ching” 
on the track list of this latest 
release I just don’t get quite as 
excited. Chairlift contributed 
something new with Does You 
Inspire You, and they haven’t 
done so since.

Moth is nice. It’s pretty good. 

But Chairlift, give us some-
thing cool, something great, 
something weird. We know it’s 
in you, and it’s waiting to be 
released. Maybe next year? 

B-

Moth

Chairlift

Columbia

ALBUM REVIEW
Powerful ‘Coliseum’

By REGAN DETWILER

Daily Arts Writer

You know those weird bands 

you find only by way of indie 
movie soundtrack? Well, The 
Besnard Lakes 
are 
one 
of 

those. 
Mark 

Ruffalo found 
them in what 
he 
called 
a 

“little 
cache 

in 
Montreal” 

of DIY musi-
cians, many of 
which — like 
The 
Besnard 

Lakes — have 
their 
own 

recording studios and equip-
ment. He wanted them for his 
2010 film “Sympathy for Deli-
cious,” which won the Special 
Jury Prize and was nominated 
for the Grand Jury Prize at Sun-
dance in 2010.

Something between Beach 

House, Arcade Fire and Band of 

Horses, they sound like an alt-
rockified amalgamation of ’60s 
rock and contemporary ambient 
electronic. Married couple Jace 
Lasek and Olga Gureas form 
the group’s core, and they’ve 
just released their fifth album, 
A Coliseum Complex Museum. 
None of their releases goes over 
45 minutes long and few go over 
8 tracks — their songs are meant 
to be listened to as part of a 
whole. Sometimes it takes sev-
eral minutes (or several songs) 
to come across any lyrics at all.

Well, it sometimes takes several 

minutes to come across any spoken 
lyrics. The music itself, though, 
is very organically expressive, 
almost lyrical in its sonic quality 
alone. The music does not need the 
crude approximation of words as 
a crutch for delivering meaning — 
the meaning transcends. Perhaps 
this is what the core duo means 
when they say that being in nature 
inspires them, for their sensibility 
might even be described as tran-
scendentalist. 

A Coliseum Complex Museum 

is not by any means a departure 
from earlier work. It seems to 
follow the same trajectory, but 
it’s more conducive to casual 
listening on a track-by-track 
basis than on a full-album scale. 
The album’s only single, “The 
Plain Moon,” could even be 
described as catchy, something 
one couldn’t have said quite as 
easily for previous releases.

This is not to say A Coli-

seum Complex Museum repre-
sents the group selling out by 
any means. They maintain the 
same gritty, kinda dirty, alt-
rock, technofolk sound they’ve 
always had — but this album 
feels like it has a little more 
momentum behind it than pre-
vious releases. The Besnard 
Lakes are a hidden gem, unas-
suming in a sea of alternative 
music that these days can feel 
a little too overwrought, a little 
too heady. A Coliseum Complex 
Museum is like a tension-releas-
ing exhale.

LITERATURE COLUMN

Contemporary lit’s 

changing form

“

“The only way to make 
sense out of change is to 
plunge into it, move with 

it and join the dance.” The late 
philosopher Alan Watts was not 
referring 
to the tech-
nological 
revolution of 
literary cul-
ture in the 
last twenty 
years, but 
these words 
are an 
unequivo-
cal push for 
writers unwilling to adapt to the 
changes in their industry.

We can freely admit that 

writing isn’t what is used to be. 
From entry points into the busi-
ness, to ideas of promotion, to 
the literal form of novels, tech-
nology guarantees that nothing 
remains constant. Rather than 
yearning for an age I barely 
knew, though, I’m choosing to 
embrace the way social media 
and the Internet in general has 
changed our lives.

Instead of relying on an 

agent to promote their works 
(though agents are still hugely 
important to novelists), many 
authors are joining social media 
and connecting with their audi-
ences directly and interactively. 
Respected authors such as Mar-
garet Atwood, Gary Shteyngart 
and Joyce Carol Oates have 
joined the 974 million exist-
ing Twitter accounts to share 
a part of themselves with their 
fans and readers. (Seriously, fol-
low Joyce Carol Oates on Twit-
ter. One of her latest tweets: 
“Tried to combine #National 
Hug Day with #Squirrel Appre-
ciation Day with unfortunate 
results.” Genius.)

But not all writers have 

joined the bandwagon of social 
media. Most noticeably, Jona-
than Franzen, author of “The 
Corrections,” “Freedom” and 
most recently “Purity,” has 
denounced Twitter as “unspeak-
ably irritating. Twitter stands 
for everything I oppose.” In 
2013, Franzen specifically called 
out commercial women’s fiction 
writer Jennifer Weiner for her 
self-promotion via social media. 
Weiner retorted with an article 
in The New Republic arguing 
that Twitter isn’t primarily a 

means of self-promotion; it’s a 
way to access the world’s “best 
cocktail party.”

This literary tussle between 

Franzen and Weiner represents 
the undeniable shift in contem-
porary literary culture. Some, 
like Franzen, see social media as 
the worst extension of ourselves, 
a manipulative way to create a 
false, misleadingly improved 
online person. Others like Wein-
er view it as a fun way to connect 
with and entertain readers and 
other authors.

In other corners of the Inter-

net, less established writers 
have a chance. Sure, there’s 
some weird Poot Lovato fan 
fiction and the sorts of obses-
sive chat rooms that create 
phenomena like “50 Shades of 
Grey,” but there’s also some 
exceptional writing being done. 
Websites like Wordpress and 
Tumblr allow users to display 
their work on a free platform 
and gather an online follow-
ing. With a large enough online 
readership, there is almost a 
guaranteed audience for an 
actual novel.

The expansion in the rela-

tionship between readers and 
authors is another major devel-
opment caused by the Internet. 
We’ve created an incredibly 
large global locale, one in which 
we can reach out to someone 
across the world and get a 
response as quickly as that of 
someone across the room. For 
authors, this means they can 
be in direct contact with their 
readership during all phases 
of writing. When Aziz Ansari 
wrote his brilliant exploration 
of different romantic landscapes 
in the recent novel “Modern 
Romance,” he reached out to the 
Reddit community and asked 
them to share their experiences. 
Ansari and his co-author, New 
York University professor Eric 

Klinenberg, used comments 
from Reddit users to explain the 
social phenomena in the book.

We can be so close now to the 

producers of our literature that 
we can literally take part in its 
creation. But social media is also 
changing the form that litera-
ture can take. The definition of 
what “writing” is has changed 
since media platforms have 
allowed everyone to become a 
writer in some sense of the word. 
Writing takes place on all forms 
of social media, but there’s a 
shift in storytelling form as well. 
Narratives like “Hey Harry Hey 
Matilda,” an epistolary novel 
between a brother and sister, are 
being told over Instagram, with 
photos accompanying the serial-
ized text.

While “Hey Harry Hey 

Matilda” is a thoughtful exper-
iment in social media and its 
relationship to the narrative 
form, the presence of social 
media has spawned some more 
spontaneous stories. The viral 
Twitter drama of Zola, which 
she describes as “long but…full 
of suspense” was one of the 
better instances of pop culture 
in 2015.

Zola is a Hooters waitress 

who is invited by a customer 
for a weekend of dancing in 
Florida, but the excursion 
quickly devolves into a narrative 
explosion of strippers, violence 
and spectacle. After reading 
the whole story, Ava DuVernay, 
director of “Selma” and “Middle 
of Nowhere” wrote on Twitter, 
“In India reading #Zola. Drama, 
humor, action, suspense, charac-
ter development. She can write. 
There’s so much untapped talent 
in the hood.”

In the past few years, the 

Internet has forced literature 
into somewhat of a crossroads. 
We’re constantly redefining 
what it means to be a writer 
and how to reconcile our pre-
conceived notions of literature 
with the burgeoning technol-
ogy at our fingertips. We have 
a choice to make — stubbornly 
linger in the past or bask in the 
developing democratization of 
storytelling.

Lerner is being taken on trip 

down to Florida. To make she’s 

OK, e-mail rebler@umich.edu.

REBECCA

LERNER

A

A Coliseum 
Complex 
Museum

The Besnard 

Lakes

Jagjaguwar

ALBUM REVIEW

TV REVIEW
Showtime’s ‘Billions’ 
is full of testosterone

By SHIR AVINADAV

Daily Arts Writer

Showtime’s new series “Bil-

lions” doesn’t quite match the 
spectacular parade of excess in 
“The Wolf of 
Wall Street.” 
But 
it 
also 

isn’t the har-
rowing 
look 

at the 2008 
economic col-
lapse and cor-
ruption of big 
banks 
cyni-

cally dissect-
ed by “The Big 
Short.” It’s the story of power-
ful U.S. District Attorney Chuck 
Rhoades (Paul Giamatti, “Love 
& Mercy”) and his mission to 
take down hedge fund giant 
Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian 
Lewis, “Homeland”). The show-
down between corruption and 
justice isn’t as simple as we’d 
like to believe it is, and “Bil-
lions” goes to great lengths to 
demonstrate this theme.

If you are an advocate of jus-

tice and hate the “one percent,” 
then the show expects you to 
root for Chuck in his relentless 
pursuit of Axe and his financial 
empire. However, in the show’s 
opening Chuck is introduced 
bound and powerless (consen-
sually, we assume), under a 
mysterious figure dressed in 
dominatrix attire. The unset-
tling details of this short, yet 
repellant scene don’t bear men-
tioning. But its role in charac-
terizing Chuck, the supposed 
hero of this series, is significant 
and 
necessitates 
discussion. 

Why show the formidable pin-
nacle of justice, U.S. attorney, 
husband and father of two get-
ting sexually dominated within 
the first 30 seconds of the pre-
miere? Pure shock value?

What’s more, this introduc-

tion is followed by Rhoades’s 
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kate 
(Condola 
Rashad, 
“Master 

of None”) lecturing an office 
newcomer about having to “be 
beyond reproach.” These words 
linger as, for the first time in the 
episode, Rhoades is revealed 
to be none other than the New 
York U.S. District Attorney. The 
stark 
contradiction 
between 

the two images of Rhoades is 
the first of many ploys to subtly 
build tension throughout the 
episode that instead result in 
lukewarm uneasiness. No one 
wants to see a middle-aged man 
(particularly one with clout) 
getting kinky.

The most contrived part of 

the plot is the role Axe’s wife 
Lara (Malin Akerman, “Watch-
men”) plays. The girl from 
a poor New York Irish fam-
ily turned billionaire’s wife 
– poised, yet retaining a tough 
edge –– is like a shoe that fits 
half a size too big on Akerman, 
adding little depth to her char-
acter. When a former partner’s 
wife embarrasses Axe in front 
of his employees, Lara’s thinly 
veiled threat lacks the punch it 
tries to deliver. She only serves 
as an accessory to Axe’s char-
acter –– another strand in the 
unravelling rope of his relatable 
image.

There’s no such thing as a 

relatable billionaire. Axe’s rep-
utation as a “man of the people” 
(he eats pizza at his old neigh-
borhood joint … then decides to 
invest in it) is a weakly devised 
obstacle put up for Chuck to 
knock down in his fight against 
Axelrod. Despite this, Lewis’s 
performance as the acute, ego-
istic alpha male is convincing. 
Between his and Giamatti’s 
subtle glares and weighted one-
liners, the antagonism between 
the two is palpable.

Also complicating Axe’s his-

tory is his role as the only sur-
viving partner of his hedge fund 
after 9/11. The tragic circum-
stances of his ascent to power 
leave us uncertain whether 
to feel sorry for him or resent 
him. As the episode unfolds, it 
becomes clearer that the man 
is power hungry and manipula-

tive, purchasing an ostentatious 
mansion and “good-naturedly” 
pitting his kids against one 
another in a trivia match at the 
dinner table.

Aesthetically, the show has 

some redeeming qualities. A 
quick cut away to the sweaty 
fingerprints left on a leather 
chair by an old colleague Dan 
Margolis 
(Daniel 
Cosgrove, 

“Days of Our Lives”) confirms 
Axe’s suspicions that he’s an 
FBI informant. The sleek cin-
ematography highlights Axe’s 
smooth demeanor and makes 
Rhoades appear even more 
overwrought than his agitated 
nature suggests he is. And while 
Axe maintains his austerity at 
all times, we see Rhoades soft-
en in the presence of his wife, 
Wendy (Maggie Siff, “Sons of 
Anarchy”). 

Wendy Rhoades can’t go with-

out mentioning. Her position as 
an HR executive for Axe Capital 
(Axelrod’s company) puts her 
in the convenient predicament 
of working for the target of her 
husband’s crusade against profi-
teering. She’s a powerhouse in 
her own right, but when Chuck’s 
attack on Axe escalates she’s 
forced to choose: her job or her 
husband (the timeworn source 
of marital conflict)? With all the 
testosterone coursing through 
the series, it’s refreshing to have 
a wife who isn’t just a narrative 
embellishment. But between her 
and Lara, there isn’t much going 
on for women in this series. 
Especially not for Chuck’s moth-
er, who’s relegated to the kitch-
en by Chuck’s calculating, upper 
crust attorney of a father.

This brings us back to Chuck, 

who’s clearly sitting on top of 
some deep-seated issues. His 
character, combined with Axe’s 
guile and America’s interest 
with the financial sector, will 
hopefully make for some inter-
esting episodes as the series 
moves forward.

B-

Billions

Piloy

Sundays at 

10 p.m.

Showtime

DO YOU POSTPONE PULLING YOUR 

WISDOM TEETH SO YOU CAN PARTY?

A WISE CHOICE — JUST LIKE JOINING ARTS.

E-mail ajtheis@umich.edu and katjacqu@umich.edu for 

information on applying to Daily Arts.

We can freely 
admit writing 
isn’t what it 
used to be.

No one wants 
to see a middle-

aged man 

getting kinky.

Justice isn’t 

always simple.

‘Moth’ is the 

New York duo’s 

most upbeat 

release thus far.

