6A — Friday, September 23, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The fact that Mac Miller is as
relevant as he is, and command-
ing the specific type of rap cul-
tural relevance that
he does, is some-
where
between
a small and large
miracle. Early Mac
sucked
(though
as a 15-year-old,
I
secretly
loved
him). He was more
of
a
radioactive
byproduct of the internet’s effect
on rap music than a notable con-
tributor to its sound. He was
what old people at Rock the Bells
would complain about. In the six
years between when Mac’s stand-
out pop-rap mixtape K.I.D.S hit
datpiff and today, Mac has had
seven Billboard Hot 100 tracks,
become completely addicted and
un-addicted
to
promethazine,
produced an entire Vince Staples
mixtape under the stage name
Larry Fisherman, infiltrated the
inner circles of both Odd Future
and TDE, slept on Rick Rubin’s
couch, moved to DUMBO (lol) and
released two critically acclaimed
albums (Watching Movies with the
Sound Off and GO:OD AM).
Part of the appeal of new Mac
Miller is that he has made mis-
takes, and he owns them. Inten-
tionally or not, new Mac plays up
his personal and sonic growth
with introspective lyrics and cre-
ative production, and it’s really
good. Old Mac crooned over sim-
ple synthy choruses and talked
about smoking weed at pool par-
ties. New Mac is warier, weirder
and a lot cooler.
The Divine Feminine, with its
captivating title, should have
been good. Described as a con-
cept album, The Divine Feminine is
supposed to be about the journey
that is falling in love. The phrase
“Divine Feminine,” is a nod to the
spiritual
concept
of a female ener-
gy governing the
world or, as Miller
paraphrases, “you
know, like, Mother
Nature” (Red Flag).
TDF does just
about
everything
to perpetuate Mac’s
“I’ve Changed” narrative. The
album art is minimalist, mostly
pink and gives off the aura of pro-
fundity. The lead single off the
album, “Dang!,” has Anderson
Paak on it and is blowing up as I
type this review. From top to bot-
tom the album is packed with in
vogue features, expensive produc-
tion, and trumpet tracks record-
ed by Julliard students. I mean,
come on, it’s a concept rap album
ostensibly about the worshiping
of female energy, it’s nearly satiri-
cally progressive.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take
more than 15 minutes into The
Divine Feminine to realize that
Mac does not deliver on many of
the album’s promises. There is
very little worshiping of female
energy in The Divine Feminine.
There is much talk about Miller’s
lust over the various women in his
life, and the problems he has with
them, but no divinity conveyed. In
other words: It’s a lot of Mac Mill-
er talking about the girls he has
sex with, and that is a gentle way
to put it.
Miller’s lyrics are unambigu-
ously misogynistic. He raps “Okay
your legs like a store they open up.
And you got people in the aisle”
and later adds “First prize, Nobel,
get a piece. Your clothes off, turn
around, let me see. (In between
Miller’s verse’s Ty Dolla $ign adds
Aaron Carter-esque nuggets like
“Parents they just don’t under-
stand.”)
For a second, if we forget about
the insincere and misleading
title and concept, the album does
sound good. The production fuses
lighthearted funk, complex jazz,
and Miller’s darker and poignant
rap. The tracks change abruptly,
and each song melts into the next.
“Dang!” is an absolute hit, with
an energy you can’t quite wrap
your brain around. The song is
complicated, maybe, by the fact
that Paak originally wrote the
song in response to the death of a
loved one. There are also flashes
of not divinity, but at least relat-
able, semi-profound lyrics. On
“Congratulations,” Miller paints
a heartbreaking image, rapping
about changing relationships, sex
and love lost, before hopping right
into “Dang!” and giving a slightly
different,
though
thematically
linked perspective.
The Divine Feminine is a well-
produced album, with an exciting
progressive concept, and a frus-
trating lack of integrity. I do not
mean to take on the lack of certain
progressive ideals in rap as a whole
— that is an entirely different dis-
cussion — but the false promise
of progressiveness in The Divine
Feminine is deeply disappointing.
New Mac Miller is a good, if not a
great artist. He’s also only 24 years
old. Regardless, the Mac Miller of
The Divine Feminine needs to do
some serious soul searching before
he tries his hand at another “pro-
gressive” concept album.
WARNER BROS.
Did Ariana meet him at a gas station?
TV REVIEW
HARRY KRINSKY
Daily Arts Writer
Mac Miller is back, weirder and a lot
cooler on new ‘The Divine Feminine’
The former teenage favorite tries to show off how he’s changed
FILM NOTEBOOK
A few weeks ago, my friend and
Daily Film colleague Jacob Rich
wrote an impassioned plea for us
all to listen to The Canon, a movie
of the week podcast in which two
film critics, Devin Faraci and Amy
Nicholson, debate whether a given
movie belongs in the “canon,” a
collection of “the great films to
live on forever,” whatever that
means. For Jacob, listening to
a new episode of The Canon is
something of a weekly ritual, and
I don’t blame him for it; there’s
something magical about hav-
ing your film agenda defined by
“enlightened” film-watchers.
But I’m not as convinced by
the strength of The Canon. Jacob
is right to note that the podcast’s
defining feature is the banter
between its two co-hosts. They
are certainly far from a myth of
public radio personalities that
can verge on sleep-inducement,
but Jacob clearly doesn’t listen to
the right public radio. Folks like
Elvis Mitchell and David Edel-
stein match Faraci and Nicholson
in their passion, but it comes out
more in their words rather than
their tone. Plus, these public radio
critics maintain some semblance
of decency in their commentary
that doesn’t demean their co-
workers or, worse, their listeners.
The
conversations
in
The
Canon,
meanwhile,
invariably
feature an extremely arrogant
and aggressive Faraci constantly
speaking over and launching ad
hominem attacks at a quiet and
always-wrong Nicholson. Nichol-
son’s research seems to be lifted
from IMDb trivia pages and Fara-
ci’s “textual analysis” seems to be
less a detailed train of thought and
more constantly referring to him-
self as a New Yorker even though
it seems like the last time he lived
there was in his childhood. It’s
infuriating: I want to root for
Nicholson because Faraci is so
profoundly an affront to respect-
able human interaction, but I find
her film tastes so poor that I am
constantly let down. Ugh.
If Jacob wishes to question
long-standing academic notions
of film, like the auteur theory,
perhaps he should also question
the desirability (and, frankly,
possibility) of having a “canon.”
In The Canon, any time one host
questions how to define the quali-
fications for entry into the canon
(Importance? Quality? Impact?),
the episode inevitably becomes
a referendum on the point of the
podcast itself. That both hosts
use self-serving arguments sur-
rounding qualifications in each
episode to justify a film’s inclusion
or exclusion proves the idea of a
canon is arbitrary to its core. I’m a
proponent of debate, but the act of
defining terms, especially defin-
ing the central idea of the whole
podcast, should precede the pod-
cast.
Plus, the podcast only serves
to divide the world of film into
“haves and have-nots.” Let’s make
the reasonable assumption that
the end goal of this podcast is to
create a final list of films in the
canon, while noting which films
did not enter the canon. Wouldn’t
that dissuade a budding and curi-
ous film audience from watching
those movies that didn’t make the
cut? All movies offer us something.
Even poor films can serve a pur-
pose; we can use all films to trace
techniques, moods and themes to
construct a meaningful narrative
of the human experience since the
birth of the art form.
I offer an alternative: it’s anoth-
er film of the week podcast, with
bickering that remains within
the realm of respectability. Each
pair of episodes (bi-weekly two-
parters) contains a current release
and a film from the past that can
teach us something about the
current release. Recent episodes
include the first and latest “Star
Wars” films; “The Neon Demon”
and “Suspiria,” an Italian hor-
ror film with similar themes and
styles; and “Finding Dory” and
“Memento.” Safe to say, the film
choices run the gamut from main-
stream to arthouse, domestic to
foreign, old to new, good to bad.
The podcast is The Next Picture
Show and it was started by alumni
of The Dissolve, a beloved website
that offered some of the greatest
film writing I have ever read. To
quote the opening mantra repeat-
ed in each episode, “No film exists
in a vacuum. All culture is more
interesting in context.” That’s not
debatable. Film is a medium that
exists to transport us through time
and space. When we talk about
film, we talk about what it copies,
steals, alludes to and references.
The Film School generation and
the current postmodern film land-
scape of directors all abide by this
principle. Why shouldn’t our pod-
cast tastes?
DANIEL HENSEL
Daily Arts Writer
The film podcast you have to hear
ALBUM REVIEW
C-
The Divine Feminine
Mac Miller
Warner Bros.
Performing an orchestra con-
cert takes a considerable number
of people. It takes an orchestra’s
worth, of course,
but behind the
scenes there are
even more indi-
viduals
working
to
manage
all
of
the
logistics
of such a large
endeavor.
Understand-
ably, it’s difficult,
and in this model,
it becomes useful
to rely on pieces
of music which
are mostly known
to the musicians,
pulled from a col-
lection of standard repertoire
which has crystallized over the
last century and a half. Playing
new and contemporary work pro-
vides challenges, and most living
composers have their orchestral
music performed quite rarely.
But most composers aren’t John
Adams.
On Friday the 23rd the Univer-
sity Symphony Orchestra, under
the direction of Kenneth Kiesler,
will be giving their inaugural
performance of the year, featur-
ing music by John Adams and
George Gershwin.
Adams is perhaps the most
famous living American concert
composer. He is more frequently
performed than any other Ameri-
can composer alive and has been
the focus of national and interna-
tional fame for the better part of
three decades, since the premiere
of his well-known opera “Nixon
in China.” On Friday the USO will
be playing two pieces, spanning
from his “Nixon in China” era to
the present decade.
The larger of the two Adams
pieces being performed is more
recent, his “Saxophone Con-
certo,” which will feature Music
Prof. Timothy McAllister as solo-
ist, a role he also filled at the pre-
miere of the concerto in 2013.
“I met him because the Los
Angeles Philharmonic brought
him in to play the solo sax part in a
piece I’d written for the first con-
cert with [Gustavo
Dudamel] as music
director,
a
piece
called ‘City Noir,’
” Adams said in an
interview with The
Michigan
Daily.
“There’s a sort of
jazz inflected part
that was very dif-
ficult,
and
they
felt that nobody in
the LA area was
really
appropriate
to play it, so they
brought Tim in, and
I
was
absolutely
entranced by his
talent and his skill. So I decided
to write a concerto for him.”
The saxophone is not generally
thought of in the context of classi-
cal music. Most people first came
to know it through the iconic
sound of jazz music, and Adams is
no different.
“I discovered the saxophone
largely through listening to a lot
of great jazz players, and I think
I had that sound and that kind
of spontaneity in mind and was
trying to translate that into a
work which, obviously, has more
formal outlines,” Adams said. “I
didn’t want to write a piece that
called for the saxophonist to
improvise his or her own ideas,
I wanted to make a work that
sounded or felt like it was largely
improvised but at the same time
was very specifically notated.”
This sense of jazz-derived lib-
erty appropriately links the “Sax-
ophone Concerto” to Adams’s
earlier piece, “City Noir,” which
was heavily jazz influenced and
was how the saxophonist McAl-
lister and the composer Adams
first met. Decades before either
of these pieces, however, Adams
was writing a very different style
of music, as the other Adams piece
on the program, “The Chairman
Dances,” demonstrates.
“I think my work has evolved,”
Adams said. “I think a work like
‘The Chairman Dances’ is proba-
bly a little more — parts of it — are
a little more pulse-driven. You
don’t quite feel that consistent,
inevitable pulse in the sax con-
certo that you feel in ‘The Chair-
man Dances.’ ”
“The Chairman Dances” is an
example of Adams’s earlier style,
which has been described as post-
minimalism, though the compos-
er has eschewed that term in favor
of “post-style.” Given Adams’s
artistic evolution over the years,
this latter term does indeed seem
to be the most accurate descrip-
tion of his work as a whole.
“Each piece is its own little
world,” Adams said. “I don’t like
to repeat myself. There are a lot
of artists, and painters and even
some composers who find a suc-
cessful template and they tend to
repeat it, just slightly altering it.
But I try to — for lack of a better
term — develop an entirely unique
DNA for each piece. I think each
one of my pieces is uniquely dif-
ferent from all the others.”
Complementing Adams’s par-
tially jazz-inspired selections is
the rest of the evening’s program,
which is comprised of two pieces
by the extremely famous 20th-
century
American
composer
George Gershwin, who is known
for his fusion of the jazz and clas-
sical genres.
The concert will feature Music
Prof. Logan Skelton performing
Gershwin’s 1925 “Piano Concerto
in F” — which is the composer’s
second most known composition
for piano and orchestra, after his
universally recognized “Rhapso-
dy in Blue” — and his symphonic
poem “An American in Paris,”
which is based on the composer’s
experience abroad in the French
capital of the 1920s. Both of the
Gershwin pieces are new critical
editions, and this will be the first
time that these editions will be
performed.
DAYTON HARE
Daily Arts Writer
The American composer sets the tone at Hill Auditorium
University
Symphony
Orchestra to
perform Adams
and Gershwin
September 23rd,
8 PM; pre-concert
lecture 7:15 PM
Hill Auditorium
Free
Adams starts USO season
BOOK REVIEW
How far will someone go to
uncover the truth? This is the
central question in the excel-
lent second novel
of Anuradha Roy,
“Sleeping on Jupi-
ter.” The book has
received
nearly
universal
praise,
winning the pres-
tigious DSC Prize
for South Asian Lit-
erature and being
long-listed for the
Man Booker Prize. The work of fic-
tion critiques hypocrisies in Indian
culture in the context of the small
tourist town of Jarmuli, which is
famous for its ancient temples, but
is also hiding dark secrets of abuse
and misogyny.
The novel switches between
three seemingly separate stories,
slowly weaving them into each
other as the text goes on. We first
meet Nomi, a young filmmaker
trying to piece together the his-
tory of her trau-
matic childhood on
assignment in Jar-
muli. On the train
there
she
meets
three older women
on holiday, long-
time friends eager
to enjoy one last
adventure together.
Once in Jarmuli,
the women are shown around an
ancient temple by Badal the monk,
who struggles over his lust for
the boy who works at his favorite
tea stand. The three stories are
brought together by chance, but
end up having immense conse-
quences over each and every per-
son involved.
Indian-born novelist Roy crafts
a riveting tale of religion, fam-
ily and violence that is nearly
impossible to put down. Central
to this book is a damning por-
trayal of religious tourism, paint-
ing Badal as one of many temple
guides who rip off their patrons
under the guise of a higher power.
Nomi’s background is a disturb-
ing critique of religious zealots, an
unwitting victim of a civil war and
repeated sexual abuse at the hands
of a religious guru, who, ironically,
is treated as a god by the Western
tourists who visit his ashram.
The novel sometimes falls into
unreliable narration. However,
this is not a disadvantage for the
text. Rather, it serves as character
development. Gouri, one of the
elderly woman, is slowly losing her
memory, and her forgetfulness as
a narrator is all too familiar for
those who have seen a grandpar-
ent fall into the same patterns.
Nomi’s understanding of what
happened to her as a child is pep-
pered with holes, mainly due to
her young age at the time of her
trauma, as well as the purposeful
repression of disturbing memo-
ries.
“Sleeping on Jupiter” is not a
happy book. It does not answer
questions about the fates of the
characters, or the reasons why
certain actions are taken. But
that’s okay. The novel is a peek into
five days in the lives of a few truly
unordinary people. Much of what
we learn about the characters is
accumulated in pieces, through
dialogue, reminiscing, and in the
case of Nomi, occasional flash-
backs. As readers, Roy wants us
to know we are not entitled to the
knowledge of what happens after
the five days are over. If anything,
we should be happy we were even
given such an intimate look in the
first place. Brilliant choices like
these are what gives “Sleeping on
Jupiter” so much weight — specu-
lating what happens to the charac-
ters is enough to keep a person up
at night.
KATHLEEN DAVIS
Managing Arts Editor
‘Jupiter’ a riveting tale of religion
“Sleeping on
Jupiter”
Anuradha Roy
Graywolf Press
Published Sept. 6
EVENT PREVIEW