The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, March 22, 2016 — 5

Gwen’s bright ‘Truth’

By SAM ROSENBERG

Daily Arts Writer

One of the many great lines from 

the vastly underrated 2014 rom-
com “Obvious Child” seems to 
speak to strug-
gling 
artists 

everywhere: 
“Creative ener-
gy 
sometimes 

comes from the 
lowest 
point 

in your life.” 
Whether you’re 
a writer, film-
maker or musi-
cian, a crappy 
moment in life 
can be the best 
starting point to something great, 
even if means starting over com-
pletely.

Gwen Stefani is no stranger to 

grappling with this kind of expe-
rience. After ending her 13-year 
marriage with Gavin Rossdale, 
Stefani hit a few bumps on the road 
to her comeback record, which was 
originally scheduled to be released 
in 2014. Luckily, a fresh perspec-
tive on her songwriting and a bur-
geoning romance with “The Voice” 
co-star Blake Shelton culminated 
into what would become her third 
record, This is What the Truth 
Feels Like, a relentlessly optimistic 
album about letting go of the past 
and relishing in the glory of the 
present. 

Throughout the record, Stefani 

focuses on this duality between the 
past and the present, especially on 

the bouncy opener “Misery,” where 
she discusses forgetting about a 
previous lover as she accepts a new 
one. Even after “Misery” trick-
les to a close, Stefani manages to 
keep the song’s refreshing energy 
going throughout the rest of This 
is What the Truth Feels Like, such 
as with the trap-inspired “You’re 
My Favorite” and the ska-infused 
“Where Would I Be?” But perhaps 
Stefani’s 
biggest 
breakthrough 

moment comes at the record’s 
fourth track, “Make Me Like You.”

In addition to its wonderful, 

bright music video, “Make Me 
Like You” is Stefani’s best and most 
polished work since 2006’s “The 
Sweet Escape.” The track’s buoy-
ant, glamorous rhythm and infec-
tious lyrics perfectly encapsulate 
the giddy adrenaline rush of start-
ing a new romantic relationship (in 
this case, with Blake Shelton). But 
while Stefani’s gushes are playful 
and sweet, her true feelings and 
emotional maturity are palpable. 
This isn’t just a silly love song 
about a girl with a simple crush — 
it’s about someone who’s ready to 
move on with her life and who has 
found someone new to share her 
life with.

The central theme to This is 

What the Truth Feels Like may 
grow tiresome at times, but Ste-
fani’s glowing ambition only fuels 
more innovative breakup anthems 
and romantic odes. The acoustic-
heavy “Truth” and saccharine 
synth jingle “Used to Love You” are 
sensible both in their sound and 
lyrical delivery; the groovy dance-

hall jam “Send Me a Picture” and 
the vaudevillian “Naughty” are fun 
detours into flirtation; “Me With-
out You” and “Rare,” the record’s 
final tracks, are among the album’s 
catchiest and funkiest. There are, 
of course, a few weak moments on 
the record, particularly with “Ask-
ing 4 It,” a trivial hip-hop exercise 
with a head-scratching feature 
from Fetty Wap. Even more cringe-
worthy is Stefani quasi-rapping on 
the strange, operatic “Red Flag,” 
which slightly undermines Ste-
fani’s personal growth. But honest-
ly, what would you expect from the 
singer who did “Hollaback Girl” 
and “Wind It Up”?

If there’s one person who’s an 

expert in expressing the ups and 
downs of relationships through 
pop music, it’s Gwen Stefani 
(though Taylor Swift also has a 
compelling case). This skill can be 
traced back to 1995, when Stefani’s 
rocky romance with her No Doubt 
bandmate Tony Kanal inspired hits 
like “Sunday Morning,” “Hey You” 
and most notably, “Don’t Speak.” 
But what makes This is What the 
Truth Feels Like so distinctive from 
other pop records is its ability to 
deftly balance both the closure of 
old relationships and the excite-
ment of new ones. Considering Ste-
fani’s scope and breadth of musical 
experience, her words have been 
able to transcend the barriers of 
music. Despite only three albums 
under her belt, Stefani’s influence 
over pop is powerful, especially 
with an album as wholesome as 
This is What the Truth Feels Like.

TV REVIEW
An off the rails start 
to ‘Bates’ season four

By MEGAN MITCHELL

Daily Arts Writer

The season four premiere of 

“Bates Motel” leads the show 
from a slow-burning thriller to 
the 
unavoid-

able trainwreck 
it was always 
meant 
to 
be. 

Freddie 
High-

more (“August 
Rush”) portrays 
the young Nor-
man Bates in 
the series, who, 
in the span of a 
season, has gone 
from the creepy 
kid down the 
street to the psychotic killer and 
motel manager in Hitchcock’s 
1960 
thriller 
“Psycho.” 
From 

the beginning, fans have always 
known what to expect out of 
“Bates Motel,” as the concrete five-
year track the showrunners estab-
lished at the start will lead up to 
Marion Crane’s doomed check-in 
to the motel. Norman Bates, previ-
ously only psychologically unbal-
anced, is about one grain of sand 
away from becoming the infamous 
son-turned-psychotic serial killer.

Season three was arguably the 

most thrilling season, starting 
with a funeral and ending with 
a bang — and by “bang” I mean 
another murder. We (almost) 
saw Norman escape his mother 
for good, despite her restrain-
ing attempts to keep him home, 
and finally run away into the 
theoretical sunset with Bradley 
(Nicola Peltz, “Transformers: Age 
of Extinction”). Even though Nor-
man, during this time, is psycho-
logically unstable, maybe some 
time away from his mother (Vera 
Farmiga, “The Conjuring”) would 
help him work out those incestual 
desires he’s been having? Well, we 
were wrong. So, so wrong. It only 

took an exit sign at the city’s bor-
ders before Norman ultimately 
became “Mother.” He’s no lon-
ger hallucinating his mother; he 
actually thinks that he’s Norma 
Bates. So “Mother” bashed Brad-
ley’s head against some rocks, and 
season three ended with a lov-
ing embrace between mother and 
son. All of this chaos just makes 
up the precursor to season four’s 
premiere.

After killing Bradley, Nor-

man has been missing for a few 
days. While Norma is out of her 
mind with worry, Norman is just 
out of his mind. He’s found in a 
field, seemingly yelling at nobody, 
but we all know he’s talking to 
“Mother.” This scene is impor-
tant because before it, we didn’t 
really have any idea just how far 
Norman had gone. Highmore’s 
performance is out of this world 
and believably psychotic. Not 
shortly after, Norman is admit-
ted into a psychiatric hospital (at 
which point I’m certain there was 
a chorus of “finally!” among fans) 
and we once again get to see High-
more creepily staring at the ceiling 
with a blank, expressionless face. 
I don’t think Norman is all right. 
But apparently Norma does, as 
she discharges him and takes him 
back home ASAP.

Meanwhile, 
Emma 
(Olivia 

Cooke, “Me and Earl and the 
Dying Girl”) is receiving the lung 
transplant that could save her life. 
Amid all of the drama and lies … 
more drama. But this is a different 
kind of drama. Whereas the “Nor-
man drama” of the show leads to a 
skin-crawling feeling that leaves 
you thinking that he’s finally 
lost all touch with humanity, the 
“Emma drama” focuses more on 
the emotional, heart-wrenching 
aspect of the series. Who wouldn’t 
be scared to get a transplant? We 
get to see Dylan’s (Max Thieriot, 
“Point Break”) love for Emma, 

which really adds an emotional 
relief to the darkness that’s been 
falling on the Bates family recent-
ly. Especially now that Emma is 
out of the woods, we can focus 
more on what we’re going to do 
about Norman, who just sponta-
neously murdered Emma’s absen-
tee mother in the psyche of none 
other than “Mother.” The murders 
are coming quicker now, and Nor-
man’s mannerisms are shifting to 
become more feminine. Highmore 
is becoming completely invested in 
his character’s transition from the 
son to the mother — all it would 
take is a wig and the audience 
could become thoroughly con-
vinced that Highmore is a woman.

Yup, Norman has finally lost 

it. And Norma is thinking that 
she should have gotten him help 
a lot sooner. From there, we get 
to see Norma’s poor care, or lack 
thereof, of Norman’s psychiatric 
issues. During the episode, mul-
tiple psychiatrists get to call her 
out for abuse, so maybe Norma is 
finally coming to the realization 
that blackouts that lead to mur-
derous rampages is something she 
should look into. Overall, it’s ulti-
mately unclear the direction the 
show will be taking for the sea-
son. To keep Norman out of state 
care, she has to find him a doctor 
and obtain a diagnosis. Especially 
since Norman can no longer dis-
tinguish dreaming from blacking 
out, a wedge in their relationship 
will surely form over who is actu-
ally committing the murders — 
Norma or “Mother”? However, it 
won’t be too long until something 
sets him off again, leading to the 
final murder of Norma Bates and 
the ultimate climax in the birth 
of Norman’s persona as “Mother.” 
Although Hitchcock coined “we 
all go a little mad sometimes” 
from an older Norman Bates, our 
Norman is too far gone for “some-
times.”

TV REVIEW
Heartbreaking ‘Day’

By ALEX INTNER

Daily Arts Writer

It was a hot summer day in 

July when my dad and I stepped 
into the Circle in the Square The-
ater 
in 
New 

York 
City 
to 

see “Lady Day 
at 
Emerson’s 

Bar & Grill.” 
We were ush-
ered into our 
seats, an area 
with tables and 
chairs set up 
like a jazz club 
in the center of 
the theater’s in-the-round seating. 
The band was playing some music, 
setting the mood for the evening 
to come. Then, the lights came 
down, Audra McDonald (“Private 
Practice”) walked from the back of 
the “club” to the stage and we were 
taken for a journey neither of us 
will ever forget.

That was my perspective before 

watching HBO’s taping of a special 
New Orleans performance. “Lady 
Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” is 
one of my favorite productions I’ve 
seen on Broadway. I hoped I could 
relive the experience of being 
in the room where it happened 
through the taping. And relive it I 
did. McDonald brought the same 
power to her portrayal of Billie 
Holiday as she did during that day 
nearly two years ago, bringing back 

the same emotions from me as she 
is nothing short of amazing in it.

“Lady Day,” billed on Broadway 

as a play with music, portrays a fic-
tionalized account of one of Holi-
day’s last concerts in Philadelphia 
in March 1959, four months before 
her death in July at age 44. Dur-
ing the “concert,” she sings several 
of her seminal jazz hits, including 
“God Bless the Child” and “Strange 
Fruit.” 
Interspersed 
between 

the songs are scenes of dialogue, 
where Holiday tells stories from 
her life and of her troubles, as she 
loses control of herself throughout 
the evening due to drinking and 
drugs.

While the vocal transforma-

tion McDonald does to play Holi-
day could easily become a bad 
impersonation, McDonald is able 
to bring layers to the character 
through pure emotion and perfor-
mance ability. The most impres-
sive element of her performance 
is how she modifies her voice to 
match Holiday’s. McDonald tra-
ditionally has a big, bold and gor-
geous soprano, but to play Holiday, 
she restrains it. Instead, her voice 
is soft and sweet, gradually grow-
ing weaker as Holiday deteriorates 
throughout the night. She embod-
ies Holiday’s voice, bringing a 
sense of beauty to every note she 
sings.

What stops the performance 

from being a pure impersonation is 
the amount of pathos she brings to 

the character through the show’s 
dialogue. She delivers a remark-
able amount of emotional layers to 
her performance as Holiday talks 
about how she was raped at age 
ten, how she was a prostitute as a 
teenager, her tough relationship 
with her mother and the racism 
she faced as she toured around the 
country. When Holiday got to the 
point where she needed to take 
drugs to continue performing, 
McDonald made me feel Holiday’s 
pain. This show is just Holiday, 
her band and a microphone, and 
McDonald carries it all the way 
through.

“Do you know what I want? I 

want a beautiful home. And some 
kids. And I wanna cook. And I want 
something else too. I want a club. 
My own club. It’s very small, it’s 
very cozy. It’s just someplace where 
I can sing to all my friends. What 
else is there?”

That’s the last line of dialogue 

in the show, and it breaks my 
heart every time I hear it. Holiday 
never had a chance at that life and 
deserved so much better than what 
she had, and that’s the tragedy 
that drives “Lady Day.” McDon-
ald won her record-setting sixth 
Tony Award for her performance 
on Broadway, and HBO giving 
people this opportunity to see her 
brilliance makes me so happy. Or 
at least as happy as being able to 
relive one of my favorite theatrical 
experiences.

B+

This Is 
What 
the Truth 
Feels Like

Gwen Stefani

Interscope

Stamps presents 
unique animator

David O’Reilly gives 
St. Patrick’s Day talk 
on his creative life

By MADELEINE GAUDIN

Daily Arts Writer

On St. Patrick’s Day, The 

Michigan Theater and Penny 
Stamps Lecture Series appropri-
ately welcomed Irish-born ani-
mator David O’Reilly. Known for 
his stripped-down 3D graphics, 
O’Reilly has earned acclaim for 
his short films, video games and 
animation work on the hilari-
ous video games in Spike Jonze’s 
“Her.”

“It started when I was about 

fifteen, and I discovered the 
work of Egon Schiele,” O’Reilly 
said of his career Thursday night.

He 
walked 
the 
audience 

through the past fifteen years of 
his creative career, explaining 
how he went from a technique-
obsessed draftsman to an uncon-
ventional 3D animator.

“For years when I first started, 

I just wanted to be good at draw-
ing,” he said.

This obsession with being 

“good” 
structured 
much 
of 

O’Reilly’s early career as a con-
cept painter, until he discovered 
3D animation.

“I sort of threw that all away 

when I made my first film which 
is ‘RGB XYZ.’ ”

When he first dove into the 

world of 3D animation, the medi-
um was reserved almost exclu-
sively for commercial work.

“This wasn’t something that 

people were doing alone … It 
wasn’t something for a creator 
to do,” he said. “You couldn’t do 
anything poetic in it.” 

O’Reilly has extensively stud-

ied the history and theory of ani-
mation. He points to the work of 
John Kricfalusi as an inspiration 

and, in his opinion, as the peak of 
2D animation.

“It felt like 3D was something 

totally different, like it didn’t 
have to play by those rules,” he 
said.

As with any new medium, the 

process of learning and master-
ing 3D animation was not an 
easy one. O’Reilly keeps a folder 
of screenshots of his glitches, 
which he views as sketches of his 
finished work.

“When you make something 

in 3D it’s a constant process of 
everything falling apart,” he said.

What O’Reilly seems to strive 

for — and achieve — more than 
anything in his work is empathy. 
The films he considers “failures” 
share a certain lack of empa-
thy, and likewise his successes 
abound with it. Even “RGB XYZ,” 
one of his earlier and visually 
cruder films, finds tremendous 
emotional depth and complexity.

“Somehow there is empathy 

going on with this character, and 
that was mind-blowing to me,” 
O’Reilly said.

The emotional response the 

film sparked in his audiences was 
surprising to O’Reilly, he added.

“So many rules are discarded 

here, so much of this is about let-
ting go of this nostalgia that was 
around animation.”

But, O’Reilly doesn’t necessar-

ily think of himself as a storytell-
er. “I think the word storyteller is 
mostly bullshit and its just kind 
of a meme word nowadays,” he 
said. For him, film is about col-
lecting ideas and information 
and presenting it to the viewer in 
a way that is compelling.

Even his more narrative work, 

like his most popular film “Please 
Say Something,” is more a collec-
tion of related scenes that it is a 
linear story. And despite its lack 
of narrative, the film is tremen-
dously compelling and heart-
breaking. O’Reilly riffs on the 

classic animation cat and mouse 
story as he follows their passion-
ate and tumultuous relationship.

The film’s lack of narra-

tive and basic, stripped down 
design lends an air of absurdity 
to O’Reilly’s work. The films 
are hilarious on their own — a 
short O’Reilly screened Thurs-
day about a horse trying to 
make friends was met with an 
uproar of laughter — but the 
crude quirkiness of their visuals 
heightens the humor.

Recently, O’Reilly has focused 

his attention on video games. 
In 2014, he released the game 
“Mountain,” a role-player game 
without any controls in which the 
user plays as a mountain floating 
in space. O’Reilly laughed as he 
discussed the uproar from the 
gaming community at the game’s 
unconventional structure.

“I think for a lot of people this 

felt very abstract or conceptual, 
but it’s very, very simple and it 
just follows the line of thinking 
that we can emphasize with any-
thing,” he said.

That thinking carries through 

into 
his 
forthcoming 
game 

“Everything,” which he demoed 
on Thursday night. Like the 
name would suggest, the game 
allows players to play as any-
thing, moving through the world 
as a rock or a bear or an atom 
or even, as O’Reilly showed the 
audience, a dancing solar system.

O’Reilly is a master of emo-

tional responses. He finished 
his talk by reading a letter from 
a mother whose son was deeply 
affected by “Mountain,” finding 
himself both mentally stimulated 
by and empathetic to the moun-
tain. Despite his unconventional-
ity, O’Reilly taps into something 
deeply emotional and personal 
in everything he does — whether 
it’s a short film about a cat and 
mouse or a video game about a 
mountain.

A

Bates 
Motel

Season 4 
Premiere

Mondays at 9 p.m.

A&E

ALBUM REVIEW
EVENT REVIEW

A

Lady Day 
at Emer-
son’s Bar 
and Grill

HBO

