6A — Monday, February 22, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

I 

always thought it was weird 
how many people I talked 
to would name “Lost in the 

World” as their favorite Kanye 
song. Don’t get me wrong — it’s 
an amazing 
track that 
scales incred-
ibly huge 
heights— but 
all things con-
sidered, it’s 
just another 
major high-
light of an 
album with 
about a dozen 
of them. “Lost 
in the World” is a coda to one of 
the greatest records of all time, 
but as a non-single, the enthu-
siasm I’ve heard for it over the 
years was a little perplexing.

I have yet to form a solid opinion 

on Kanye’s latest: The Life of Pablo. 
I want to hail Rihanna singing Nina 
Simone over a sample of “Bam 
Bam” as some of the best music I’ve 
ever heard, but I need to forget about 
those opening Taylor-Swift-referenc-
ing lines to do so. I think “No More 
Parties in LA” is one of Kanye’s best 
songs ever, but it’s sandwiched in 
between two of his most mediocre. 
When I was walking to class this 
week I always thought about try-
ing to pick a song from the album 
to listen to, but I usually found that 
I’d rather listen to something like 
Acid Rap. When I can give it my full 
attention, though, and I’m not just 
looking for pleasant songs I love in 
between lectures, I’ve been pouring 
over Pablo, trying to make as much 
sense of it as I can. But I’m still 
completely overwhelmed by Kanye’s 
vision. The Life of Pablo is hip hop’s 
answer to James Joyce — genius-
level intellect and never-before-
thought creative ambitions fully 
realized to a hysterical extent that’s 
astounding yet impenetrable. This 
album is Kanye’s fickle impulsive 
genius brain made painfully public 
in the most tangible way possible, 
but to even call Pablo an album and 
put it in the same category as the 
millions of traditional collections of 
songs out there in the world doesn’t 
feel quite right.

But as I listened to TLOP, I found 

my mind going back to “Lost in 

the World.” Kanye’s verse on this 
song is one huge contradiction, as 
he speaks to this “you” who seems 
to represent every gigantic idea, 
good and bad, in the entire universe. 
And when I hear Pablo, I hear all 
of the ideas in Kanye’s head trying 
to become tangible and fit together, 
with no filter and nothing holding 
them back. The art Kanye creates is 
everything he is and all he wants to 
be, layered one on top of the other 
and relentlessly captured from every 
possible angle. Music is his devil, his 
angel, his heaven, his hell, his now 
and forever, his freedom and his jail, 
his lies and his truth.

Now listen to “Father Stretch My 

Hands” off Life of Pablo. Kanye’s 
two-part track incorporates soulful 
backing vocals like Marvin Gaye’s 
What’s Going On, features classical 
composer Caroline Shaw, a Future 
sound-alike, a Metro Boomin’ drop, 
his dumbest lyrics (the bit about the 
bleached-asshole model on part one) 
and some of his darkest (everything 
he says on part two.) Kanye throws 
all these pieces into a vortex and 
expects us to make sense of whatev-
er the final composition turns out to 
be. “Father Stretch My Hands” is a 
song that not that long ago wouldn’t 
have even registered as music. It’s an 
enourmous contradiction of sounds 
that tests your patience and pounds 
at you and purposely evades any-
thing comfortable or familiar, and 
it’s endlessly fascinating even if it’s 
not entirely satisfying.

I obviously have no idea what 

Kanye West’s actual mental state 
is now or has ever really been, but 
unlike some critics and fans, The 
Life of Pablo and the circus sur-
rounding it don’t make me person-
ally worried for his long-term sanity. 
In that SNL audio, I just heard a 
really stressed-out dude finally los-
ing it after days of non-stop work; in 
his tweets, I just see cries for atten-
tion and experimentation (“what 
happens if I say this?”) mixed with 
occasional smart lucidity; in the 
music itself, I just hear a mostly self-
aware Kanye trying to be as real as 
possible, not self-editing or holding 
back any of his ideas, stretching 
himself as far as he can go.

Kanye’s music has always strived 

for this childlike state — one where 
all dreams are possible and society’s 

norms are meaningless and the worst 
thing someone can do to you is lie—
and more than ever that young cre-
ative ideal is what I hear on Pablo. 
Being a kid, there’s always a conflict 
between maturity and immaturity 
— multiple interior parts of yourself 
duking it out as you try to figure 
out who you are and what kind of 
person you’re going to become, and 
in Kanye’s broken experiments and 
regrettable phrasings and glorious, 
inspired combinations of sounds, 
that’s exactly what I hear.

And so as I try to figure out what 

Life of Pablo will mean to anyone 
months or even years from now, I’m 
seeing it more and more as a record 
for kids and teenagers — one that 
stretches the realms of possibility 
and acts like the choking, authori-
tarian mainstream world is of no 
consequence and has never even 
existed. Kanye is Van Morrison cre-
ating tender, beautiful, nine-minute 
odes to drag queens on Astral 
Weeks or Wilco smashing the typi-
cal clichéd rock album to pieces on 
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but of course, 
he’s none of these things, because 
Kanye’s mind is truly unique and 
only he can approximate it to us 
through music.

If Kanye defines success as how 

real he can make his fantasies, Life 
of Pablo pushes him even higher. 
If he’s not untouchable, he’s at least 
in Beatles territory, continually 
forcing us to expand our definition 
of hip hop and pop music like the 
Fab Four did for pop and rock with 
Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. Listening 
to Life of Pablo, it’s obvious Kanye 
is still lost in the world, using his 
art and ambition to search for 
meaning in the disorienting dark-
ness of life. He’s not successful all 
the time, but along with Pablo’s 
garbage fires, the album also fea-
tures a few peak Kanye moments 
(namely “Ultralight Beam”) where 
you can feel that enlightenment 
just centimeters away from his 
outstretched fingers, and it makes 
for the most incredibly thrilling and 
challenging music I’ve ever heard. I 
hope Kanye never gets found.

There’s nothing crazier 

than Theisen in a Giuseppe 

store. To calm him down, 

e-mail ajtheis@umich.edu. 

MUSIC COLUMN

The beautiful dark, 
twisted ‘Life of Pablo’

ADAM 
THEISEN

AMC

They’re applauding T-Swift’s Album of the Year win.

‘Call Saul’ hits hard 
with gloomy reality

By MATT BARNAUSKAS

Daily TV/New Media Editor

Walter White (Bryan Crans-

ton, “Trumbo”) got to go out with 
a bang. The same cannot be said 
for his crooked 
lawyer 
Saul 

Goodman/
Jimmy McGill 
(Bob 
Oden-

kirk, “W/ Bob 
and 
David”). 

While the for-
mer 
Heisen-

berg 
died 
at 

the 
end 
of 

“Breaking Bad” 
blasting 
away 

neo-Nazis, 
embracing 
his infamy and earning some 
semblance of redemption, Saul 
resigned himself to a life of hid-
ing, toil and anonymity to avoid 
arrest.

Like the opening of its first 

season, “Better Call Saul” ’s season 
two premiere reacquaints us 
with Saul in his monochromatic 
purgatory as “Gene,” the manager 
of a Nebraska Cinnabon. There’s 
an 
inherent 
sadness 
in 
the 

mediocrity of Saul’s new life, 
with Odenkirk bearing the world-
weary weight of Gene. When 
Gene gets stuck in a dumpster 
room, with one door locked and 
the other set to alert police if 
opened, he becomes the man 
trapped in his own life, resigned 
to waiting for someone else to 
open the door.

This is the end for the man. 

And in that fact lies the ultimate 
tragedy of “Better Call Saul” 
— the inevitability of Jimmy 

McGill’s transformation into Saul 
Goodman and Saul eventually 
wearing the mask of Gene. It’s 
an endpoint the audience knows 
will inevitably come, but it 
doesn’t make the series any less 
intriguing.

“There’s no reward at the end 

of this game,” Jimmy muses to 
love interest Kim (Rhea Seehorn, 
“Whitney”) as the pair sits in the 
bar of the resort that Jimmy is 
staying in after turning down a 
position at a prestigious law firm. 
Jimmy is caught at a crossroads; 
it’s entirely possible to see the 
con man living the rest of his life 
scamming blowhards like Ken 
Wins (Kyle Bornheimer reprising 
his one-off role from “Breaking 
Bad”), but the decision has already 
been made. Every step Jimmy 
takes leads him towards Saul; 
there may be detours like the 
resort, but the destination is set. 
“Better Call Saul” is a tragicomedy. 
Sure, the characters are verbosely 
hilarious as creators Vince Gilligan 
(“Breaking Bad” ’s showrunner) 
and Peter Gould (“Too Big to Fail”) 
along with their writers insert 
amusing specificity and charm 
into every member of the cast. 
Underneath it all, though, is the 
sobering inevitability that, for at 
least some of these characters, the 
end will be far worse than where 
they began.

While the thoughtlessness of 

prescription drug dealer Daniel 
Warmolt (Mark Proksch, “The 
Office”) with his flame decaled 
Hummer 
H2 
and 
obsession 

with baseball cards is amusing, 
foreboding danger lurks right 
around 
the 
corner. 
Mike 

Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks, 

“Community”) may have walked 
away from being the fool’s hired 
muscle, but, as the audience 
knows, he can’t stay away forever. 
Like fellow “Breaking Bad” alum 
Odenkirk, 
Banks’s 
character’s 

future is firmly set in stone, no 
matter what he does.

Often framed within wide 

shots, the characters of “Better 
Call Saul” are made insignificant 
by the world around them and 
their 
own 
encroaching 
fate. 

Written and directed by Thomas 
Schnauz 
(“Reaper”), 
“Switch” 

may be offering a brief stoppage 
on the way to the endpoint, but 
the signs pointing towards it are 
there — whether it’s in the form of 
a minor “Breaking Bad” character 
like Ken or the literal signs that 
Jimmy often ignores in one life 
but cautiously obeys in the next.

When Jimmy finally accepts 

the position at the law firm of 
Davis and Main, it’s a continuation 
down the path that will end in 
tragedy. Davis and Main, with 
their company cars and cocobolo 
desks, will turn into a strip mall 
law firm with faux pillars and a 
blown up copy of the Constitution, 
which will also fade away. All 
roads lead to a dead-end Cinnabon 
in Nebraska — enjoy the ride while 
you can.

A-

Better 
Call Saul

Season Two 
Premiere

Mondays 
at 10 p.m.

AMC

TV REVIEW

HBO show from 
legendary creators 
depicts life in the 

’70s fast lane

By SHIR AVINADAV

Daily Arts Writer

“Vinyl” reflects the legendary 

names heading its creation. Mar-
tin Scorsese and Terence Winter 
team up post-
“Boardwalk 
Empire” 
to 

produce anoth-
er 
powerful 

period 
piece. 

The 
lengthy 

series 
pre-

miere 
(nearly 

two 
hours) 

takes on the 
’70s New York 
music 
scene 

with countless 
depictions of coke-fueled antics, 
abounding sex and spectacular 
musical performances. In short, 
it abides by the sex, drugs and 
rock ‘n’ roll trope of the iconic 
rock era.

Though these elements are 

ubiquitous, they don’t define 
the show superficially. In the 
very first scene, Richie Fines-
tra (Bobby Cannavale, “Board-
walk Empire”), the once-great 
record producer around which 
the show centers, rips off his 
car’s rearview mirror to line up 
what we assume is the first coke 
he’s done in some time. This 
hook into the story suggests 
there is more to Richie than 
the staggering music producer 
we see at a moment of weak-
ness. And when office secretary 
Jamie Vine (Juno Temple, “The 
Dark Knight Rises”) sleeps with 
aspiring punk musician Kip Ste-
vens (James Jagger, “Mr. Nice”) 
after a particularly rowdy per-
formance by his band the Nasty 
Bits, she begins to mold him 
into a musician she can present 
to Richie to sign, indicating her 
ingenuity that exceeds her low 
rank on the industry totem pole.

The show is rooted in the par-

ticularities of an industry overrun 
with seedy characters and their 
unwholesome pastimes (includ-
ing ingesting a variety of drugs), 
but it doesn’t fall into the trap of 
glamorizing the lifestyle. Can-
navale’s powerful performance as 
Richie, the music exec with a sto-
ried past, illustrates this grounded 
storytelling. We’re taken back and 
forth between his humble begin-
nings in the music industry and 
his present day disillusionment as 
a man on the comedown from the 
pinnacle of his career. The story 
is told through Richie’s perspec-
tive, which he warns from the 
start may be blurred by his exces-
sive drug use and “bullshit.” His 
character is written masterfully 
by Terence Winter and George 
Mastras and executed poignantly 
by Cannavale.

After the first scene of Rich-

ie’s meltdown in his car, we learn 
what sparked the series of events 
leading to his moment of weak-
ness. As Richie and his partners 
Zak Yankovich (Ray Romano, 
“Everybody Loves Raymond”) 
and Skip Fontaine (J.C. MacK-
enzie, “The Departed”) sit at a 
conference room table with the 
German executives buying their 
floundering record label Ameri-
can Century, Richie’s voiceover 
briefly explains how he got to 
where he’s sitting and how he 
“earned his right to be hated” 
carrying kegs and cleaning up 
vomit before starting his own 
company. 
More 
importantly, 

the previous scene’s weight is 
made clear when Richie states, 
“I had a golden ear, silver tongue 
and brass balls. But the problem 
became my nose, and everything 
I put up it.”

Aside from the clever prose 

and cynicism towards the music 
business, the show is enhanced 
with beautifully executed cin-
ematography and a soundtrack 
carefully curated by show cre-
ator Mick Jagger himself. The 
rapid cutting and various angles 
of some of the more striking 
performances create a blur of 
leather pants, guitar thrash-
ing and headbanging that draw 
us into the performance as if 

we were one of the enthralled 
audience 
members 
attending 

the show ourselves. Scorsese’s 
style is stamped on to the show 
with dreamy interludes of well-
known musicians performing in 
Richie’s imagination, reflecting 
whatever emotions are cours-
ing through him at the same 
moment. That is the beauty 
of the show. It bonds together 
the music and its emotional 
response in a way that reflects 
the profound attachment Richie 
and other music fans have to 
their experiences with it.

The music of the period is 

infused into every moment of 
the show, from playing over the 
loudspeakers at American Cen-
tury’s offices to catching Richie’s 
attention as he passes a night-
club driving down the street. 
The music’s constant presence 
in the narrative is as much a 
part of Richie’s character as it is 
the show itself. His passion for 
music is delivered with such sin-
cerity that it makes his efforts to 
salvage his company by selling it 
all the more poignant. 

Richie’s devotion to his com-

pany and the world of music also 
creates a rift between his wife 
Devon (Olivia Wilde, “Rush”) 
and himself, who comes in 
second to the job he lives and 
breathes for. Like any middle 
aged executive with his glory 
days slipping away behind him, 
Richie is forced to look back at 
his past mistakes, including his 
neglect of his family, with tor-
mented questioning of what’s to 
come next. This struggle, along 
with an epic soundtrack, is what 
we have to look forward to as the 
series continues.

‘Vinyl’ embraces 
truth of rock era

TV REVIEW

All roads lead to 
a Cinnabon in 

Nebraska.

A-

Vinyl

Series 
Premiere

Sundays 
at 9 p.m.

HBO

The show bonds 
together music 
and emotional 

response.

