4B — Thursday, March 17, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

SINGLE REVIEW

Weddings are often viewed 

as a joyous celebration of eternal 
monogamy, but for British singer 
Natasha 
Khan (aka 
Bat for 
Lashes) 
they can be 
extremely 
harrowing. 
This duality 
imbued 
within marriage acts as the 
emotional core of her new song 
“In God’s House” from her 
upcoming concept album, The 
Bride. From just one listen, you 
can hear Khan agonizing with 
fear as she waits for her groom 
to get to the church, only to 
discover that he will never show 
up.

A bewitching, mystical synth-

pop track, “In God’s House” is 
one of Khan’s most ambitious 
and emotionally stirring works 
to date. Its ethereal synths 
glisten and propel Khan’s 
masterful, vulnerable vocals, 
which swing effortlessly from 
a gentle whisper to a shrieking 
cry. “Through this veil they 
can’t see / The fog of death 
unveil me,” Khan sings woefully, 
almost as if the world is slowly 
closing on her. But the most 
heartbreaking moment comes 
when Khan realizes that her 
lover has been killed by a fire, 
repeating the word “fire” until 
she can no longer catch her 
breath.

In a sense, “In God’s House” 

is a tonally opposite counterpart 
to last month’s single “I Do,” 
which offers a much more 

light-hearted narrative on 
Khan’s hapless bride through 
a swooping harp instrumental 
and lyrics that reflect her giddy 
optimism on her wedding day. 
Both songs are like two sides of 
the same playing card: “I Do” 
saw Khan ruminating anxiously 
and excitedly over nuptial 
commitment, whereas “In God’s 
House” found her searching 
for answers on the verge of 
an emotional breakdown. 
Entrenched within the nuances 
of marriage, Khan understands 
that where there’s happiness, 
there’s also darkness. If “I Do” 
is the sweet, rosy prologue to a 
wedding, then “In God’s House” 
is the nightmarish climax 
with an uneasy, ambiguous 
resolution.

- SAM ROSENBERG

A-

In God’s 
House

Bat for Lashes

By HARRY KRINSKY

For the Daily

I can only imagine what the 

conversation 
between 
Kanye 

West and 19-year-old rapper 
Desiigner sounded like where 
Kanye told Desiigner he was 
sampling Desiigner’s viral hit, 
“Panda,” on The Life of Pablo. 
’Ye also signed Desiigner to his 
record label GOOD Music — an 
impressive endorsement and a 
sign that Desiigner is here to stay, 
at least for a little while. However, 
before we throw Desiigner into 
the growing pool of innovative 
new-school rappers, it’s important 
to take a long look at his musical 
roots.

Probably the most quotable 

line in “Panda” is the first one. 
Desiigner raps, “I got broads in 
Atlanta / Twisting dope, lean, and 
the Fanta.” Desiigner references 
Atlanta in his lyric, but more 
palpable is the iconic Atlanta 
sound Desiigner emulates. He 
raps with timely Young Thug-
esque adlibs sprinkled in and a 
low, almost apathetic, drawl that 
is so much more Future’s than it 
is Desiigner’s. (Desiigner’s sound 
is so similar to that of Future’s 
that when Desiigner’s chorus 
comes onto Kanye’s “Freestyle 4,” 
even after the hundredth listen I 
can’t help but think, “Are we sure 
that isn’t Future?”). The bitter 
irony, and maybe a microcosm of 
Desiigner’s problem, is that he has 

never been to Atlanta. The rapper 
so easily compared to Atlanta’s 
heaviest rap hitters has lived his 
entire life in Bed Stuy Brooklyn (A 
neighborhood graced with its own 
set of rap legacies).

Rap music has always tiptoed 

the fine line between inspiration 
and theft. (Just throw on Guerilla 
Black’s “Compton,” close your eyes 
and try to convince yourself you’re 
not listening to an unreleased 
Biggie track.) But Desiigner seems 
like an extreme example. “Panda” 
sounds like a focus group tested 
version of a Future mixtape track. 
“Future, mumble a little less, let’s 
make the snare clap a little harder, 
and while we’re at it, MORE 
ADLIBS.” Regardless, “Panda” 
is a great song. It’s Future, subtly 
contorted and twisted for a more 
pleasing pop sound. It replaces 
the doldrums of codeine addiction 
and 
depression 
with 
simple 

lyrics about cars and money (and 
pandas). It’s also plagiarism.

A few years ago Drake was 

forced to pay rapper Rappin’ 4 
Tay $100,000 for stealing the Bay 
Area legend’s verse, tinkering 
with it slightly and putting it on 
YG’s “Who Do You Love.” Rappin’ 
4 Tay rapped “I got a ho named 
Reel-to Reel. She got a buddy 
named SP 12, now you know the 
deal. We gets freaky in the studio 
late night, that’s why the beats that 
you hear coming real tight.” While 
a red-handed Drizzy rapped “I got 
a shorty name Texas Syn. She got 

a buddy named Young JB and now 
you know the deal. We turnt up in 
the studio late night. That’s why 
the songs that you hear are comin’ 
real tight.” That is, and will always 
be, plagiarism.

How different is Rappin’ 4 

Tay’s case compared to Future’s 
though? Sure, I can’t as plainly 
put in words the plagiarism of 
Desiigner’s work, but listen to any 
Future song and any Desiigner 
song and the similarities are 
undeniable. What makes a lyric 
any more integral to the song than 
the tone or the style? Why can 
anybody and their mother hop on 
a Metro Boomin’ beat and mumble 
like Future, but if they steal a lyric 
they’re a hack?

There’s probably no definitive 

answer for why Desiigner hasn’t 
caught too much flack for his 
subtle plagiarism. It might be 
because the GOOD Music moniker 
gives 
Desiigner 
temporary 

immunity from rap criticism. It 
might be that I have jumped the 
gun, and once “Panda” moves 
from “popular” to “overplayed” 
the criticism will come. My guess, 
though, is that people just don’t 
care about plagiarism in rap that 
doesn’t have to do with lyrics. 
Just look at Kanye, who’s made an 
entire career out of coordinated 
rap curation.

I love “Panda,” but I’m skeptical 

about how far Desiigner can go 
riding on the coattails of a city he’s 
never been to.

Desiigner’s theft of 
Atlanta trap music 

S

poilers for ‘The Room’ fol-
low. 

This weekend, scores 

of moviegoers, myself included, 
will line up at the State Theatre for 
the annual 
midnight 
showing of 
the 
2003 

film 
“The 

Room.” 
We will be 
treated to 
100 
min-

utes of a 
cinemati-
cally incon-
gruous, 
confused 
anomaly of a film. During this 
spectacle — which features plot 
points that arise only to be dropped 
immediately following their men-
tion, several anatomically ignorant 
sex scenes in the first 30 minutes 
and a medley of football-tossing 
shenanigans — we will laugh, we 
will hurl both insults and plastic 
spoons at the screen and we will 
toss footballs. This is all a ritual 
honoring the cult classic film that 
many regard as the king of worst 
films ever.

I’ve never seen “The Room” in 

a theater, and so I look forward to 
partaking in the shared experience 
of mocking and interacting with 
director-producer-writer-star 
Tommy Wiseau’s widely regarded 
fiasco of a film. And it’s very, very 
easy to mock. “The Room” very 
deliberately breaks all of the 
rules of cinema at every angle: a 
script that defies the bounds of 
the English language, camera 
movements 
that 
ignore 
the 

established setting (for example 
an effortless swipe left through 
what should be a wall), a complete 
lack of character direction so that 
characters appear and vanish 
at 
Wiseau’s 
will, 
overdubbed 

dialogue that doesn’t quite match 
up the movements of the mouth, 
etc. “The Room” doesn’t do 
just most things badly — it does 
everything badly. 

But to dissect every single 

problem the film has is best 
reserved for actually viewing 
the film. After all, that’s where 
much of the fun is. I’d rather try 
something more interesting and 
take a stab at analyzing Wiseau’s 
vision, if he even has one. No 
director, even if they’re the insane, 
probably stranded extraterrestrial 
that is Tommy Wiseau, sets out to 
deliberately destroy every accepted 
convention in film and achieve 
that destruction so successfully. 
“The Room” had a point, and it is 
perhaps worth examining what 
that point is.

An appropriate one-sentence 

summary I found for the film 
reads, “A happy-go-lucky banker 
sees his world fall apart when 
his friends begin to betray him 
one by one.” The banker, Johnny, 
is friendly, caring and honest 
and treats his fiancée, Lisa, to 
expensive gifts and frequent sex 
in what appears to be Lisa’s navel. 
This apparently solid relationship 
begins to unravel when Lisa 
decides she no longer loves Johnny 
and begins a passionate affair 
with Johnny’s best friend Mark. 
Ultimately the love triangle leads 

to a series of confrontations that 
result in tragedy.

This 
series 
of 
unfortunate 

events ignites 10 minutes into the 
film when Lisa’s mother Claudette 
comes to visit her daughter. Lisa 
tells her mother about her change 
of heart about Johnny, that he is 
“so … boring.” Claudette responds 
with an argument that switches 
between reminders of Johnny’s 
love and acknowledgements of 
Johnny’s wealth. Johnny, she says, 
“supports you, provides for you, 
and, darling, you can’t support 
yourself,” and “his position is very 
secure. And he told me he plans to 
buy you a house.” Lisa responds 
to her mother with reluctant 
acceptance, her face smoldering 
with disappointment.

With this telling first encounter, 

we come to realize that Lisa has 
been pigeonholed into the position 
of housewife. Her mother clearly 
views her as inept and incapable of 
fulfilling any role that is not as a sex 
object. And it is clear this is the role 
Johnny desires for his fiancée; that 
the very first meeting we see of this 
couple is their navel coitus, ended 
only by Johnny’s leaving for work, 
establishes Johnny as breadwinner 
and Lisa as concubine.

Compounding this relationship, 

which is reminiscent of 1950s 
values, with the obvious age 
difference between Johnny and 
Lisa (Johnny’s face bears the 
marks of a grizzled, hardened 
Vietnam vet and contrasts with 
Lisa’s sprightly 23 year-old visage), 
we come to understand that 
Johnny and Claudette represent 
the old world while Lisa embodies 
the generation that came of age 
either just before or just after 
September 11.

Yes, “The Room” is a study of 

the expectations and limitations 
of two warring generations, vying 
for dominance in this post-9/11 
America. Johnny and Claudette 
embody the Old World, and adhere 
to the old order with which they 
grew up and have lived for some 
time. Lisa, by contrast, personifies 
the new generation that sees how 
the Old World has failed to nurture 
its citizens and has repressed the 
young to elevate the established. 
Now the new generation, as Lisa 
says, “wants it all” and looks to 
upend the old — in cheating on 
Johnny, Lisa rebels against the Old 
World. Every scheme she concocts 
— creating a fake pregnancy and 
claiming Johnny has become 
abusive, 
while 
simultaneously 

defending and even glorifying 
him — mocks the old system and 
furthers her utter dismantling of it.

And it seems others too are 

shifting 
away 
from 
the 
Old 

World, as evidenced by Johnny’s 
encounter at the flower shop. “Oh 
hi Johnny, I didn’t know it was 
you,” the store owner says, despite 
the fact that 1) Johnny is evidently 
her favorite customer and 2) it is 
impossible not recognize a face 
that looks like Wormtongue from 
“Lord of the Rings” but was left 
just a little too long in the kiln. 
Indeed, society is leaving Johnny 
behind.

At the heart of this struggle 

between Old and New is Mark, 
torn 
by 
his 
friendship 
with 

Johnny and his equally powerful 

attraction to Lisa. Mark writhes 
under the weight of his actions, 
reaching his peak frustration 
when he very deliberately attempts 
to throw one of his friends off a 
building, only to schizophrenically 
and immediately revert back to 
his normal, amiable self. Each 
encounter between Mark and 
these two other indomitable forces 
draws him further into the fray, 
tugging at his loyalties whether 
through games of catch in the park 
with Johnny or sex with Lisa; it 
is the battle for Mark’s soul that 
provides the beating heart of this 
story.

The 
final 
confrontation 

between Johnny and Mark, a 
fistfight at a surprise birthday 
party for Johnny, solidifies Mark’s 
rejection of Johnny and the Old 
World. Johnny, despondent and 
tortured by remembrances of all 
he has lost, destroys his apartment 
and everything in it — the physical 
markers of his broken, capitalist 
system. 
“Why? 
Why 
is 
this 

happening to me?” he beckons, 
only to realize, “It’s over.” He puts 
a loaded gun in his mouth and 
pulls the trigger.

And so the two symbols of the 

Old World, Johnny and Claudette, 
are destroyed — Johnny by his 
own hand and Claudette by her 
inevitable demise due to the 
breast cancer that she mentioned 
in passing at one point. His body 
positioned cross-like, recalling 
the Christ, Johnny must die for 
the building of a new world. What 
that world brings is uncertain. 
Perhaps Mark and Lisa will 
build a life together — despite his 
insisting she “drop off the Earth, 
that’s 
a 
promise” 
(whatever 

that means), Mark stays with 
Lisa to comfort her and Denny, 
Johnny’s creepy ward — perhaps 
they won’t. Perhaps Denny will 
learn from Johnny’s mistakes, 
or perhaps he’ll embrace the 
murderer inside him that is 
clearly seeping from just below 
the surface. The aftermath simply 
cannot be known.

What is known is almost every 

scene in “The Room” begins with 
someone entering a space, and ends 
with someone leaving it, and if that 
is not symbolism then I do not 
know what is: our time in a space, 
in a room, is finite, just as a ruling 
system begins and will eventually 
break under its own weight. How 
we perceive usurper and usurped 
depends on our positions within 
that system, but the system will 
certainly, one day, fall.

Destruction is the thematic 

core of “The Room,” mirrored 
in 
Wiseau’s 
destruction 
of 

every convention of film. What 
I 
previously 
described 
as 

problematic bad cinema might 
actually be Wiseau dismantling 
the old for something new. How we 
view “The Room” — as a comedy 
of errors or as a critical anti-film 
— speaks to an artistic vision, or 
megalomaniacal vision. Choosing 
which option is a privilege I leave 
to you, lest you be otherwise torn 
apart.

Bircoll can’t be melted by 

jet fuel. To confirm, email 

jbircoll@umich.edu. 

FILM COLUMN

Entering deeper into 

‘The Room’

JAMIE 

BIRCOLL

GOOD MUSIC

A spooky handshake.

MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW

Our hearts are broken, his 

heart is broken — we’re all 
broken.

By leaving 

Vampire 
Weekend 
— one of 
the most 
essential 
millennial 
bands to 
surface 
since Arcade 
Fire — Rostam Batmanglij, 
the band’s former producer, 
ensured that. But he wants to 
move on, and we’ll hear him 
out. His latest single, whether 
deliberate in that association 
or not, stays in the field of 
separation and heartbreak, as 
ROSTAM attempts to make 
a name for himself beyond 
Vampire Weekend.

The music video for “Gravity 

Don’t Pull Me” succeeds 
in this far better than its 
predecessors. While “EOS,” 
“Don’t Let it Get to You” and 
“Wood” could all feasibly be 
worked into his former band’s 
sound, this is ROSTAM’s first 
track on which he gives a true 
argument that he can flourish 
as an individual, not simply 
as support for an absorbing 
frontman or woman — at least 
production-wise. Where his 
first solo works each struggled 
at times to carry themselves 
through the whole track, 
giving a sense of unrealized 
potential, “Gravity Don’t Pull 
Me” turns and spins start to 
finish, maintaining the energy. 
The tail-end of the track 
evolves into a consuming synth 
reminiscent of the elusive 
electronic artist Jai Paul, and 
it features some of ROSTAM’s 
most captivating solo work yet.

Lyrically, though, ROSTAM 

still lags. His songwriting is 
basic and straightforward, a 

strong contrast to Vampire 
Weekend frontman Ezra 
Koenig’s complex witticisms 
and intricate tales. “Gravity 
Don’t Pull Me” gives itself 
away clearly: “And the worst 
way I ever felt / Was from 
this same boy that I still miss 
/ Cause I messed it up / And 
it broke my heart.” Still, it’s 
a strong enough message to 
complete the track and add 
some emotion while it’s at it.

The video that accompanies 

the track reflects the 
lyrics — stripped-down, 
straightforward and 
occasionally interesting. 
ROSTAM enters our view 
singing into a mic and spends 
the rest of the video doing 
just that. The true driving 
force behind this video is the 
dancers, Jack Grabow and Sam 
Asa Pratt. Their compelling 
choreography, peaking when 
their mirrored movements 
become nearly indecipherable 
from one another, captures 
the pop sensibility of the track 
and the longing that its words 
divulge. The camerawork and 
the visual effects speckled 
throughout add traces, making 
sure not to interfere too much.

The video, however, suffers 

from the same problem his 
prior releases did: unrealized 
potential. The best moments, 

when the song, dance and 
effects are most in-sync, are 
too often disrupted or tabled 
for more scenes of ROSTAM 
at the mic. It’s understandable 
that he wants the focus on 
himself for a change, but it’s 
too jarringly generic against 
the backdrop of the track and 
the dancers. When the video 
ends with ROSTAM walking 
slowly away from the stand, it’s 
difficult to shake off a feeling 
of hackneyed millennial 
cheesiness.

One commenter aptly notes, 

“This is the most New York 
thing I’ve ever seen,” and while 
for that I would direct readers 
to Matt and Kim’s “Daylight” 
video, the specter of New 
York is clear. The dancers are 
dressed in all black, there’s a 
grimy white wall, a fashionable 
looking rain-jacket and a 
general sense that everyone 
involved in this video lives in 
Brooklyn.

That’s not necessarily a bad 

thing. But for an artist trying 
his best to establish his own, 
ROSTAM risks succumbing 
to his affiliations when he 
needs to transcend them most. 
“Gravity Don’t Pull Me” is a 
step in the right direction. It’s 
still just a step.

- MATT GALLATIN

B-

Gravity 
Don’t 
Pull Me

ROSTAM

XL RECORDINGS

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