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.