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.