American 
Football’s 
first 

release in 17 years begins softly, 
with 
a 
quietly 

crescendoing 
set 
of 
chimes 

that 
reverberate 

through the ears. 
The 
delicacy 
of 

the noise evokes 
thoughts 
of 

tinkling 
wind 

chimes dancing in 
the wind, reminiscent of a sun 
soaked warm welcome back 
home after a long and tiring 
adventure.

The group was originally 

active from 1997 to 2000, 
releasing their first self-titled 
LP in 1999 and a few other 
works before disbanding. In the 
years since, the members have 

been 
working 

on 
separate 

ventures.

 LP2 has a 

gentle 
sound, 

fueled by Mike 
Kinsella’s 
burnished 
yet 
powerful 

voice, 
silky 

with honeyed nostalgia. Slow 
buildups 
and 
lulls 
in 
the 

sound blended with slightly 
unexpected vocal harmonies, 

steady and persistent bass and 
Steve 
Lamos’s 
multifaceted 

drumming are magnetizingly 
immersive, striking a perfect 
balance and ensuring that the 
vocals are never drowned out 
by the instrumentals.

American Football has a 

distinct imprint on the emo 
scene in part for their obscure 
time signatures, which lend the 
music an asymmetrical quality 
that not only complicates the 
instrumental 
line 
but 
also 

creates a complex, many-sided 
listening experience. In some 
of the songs, the guitars play 
on a completely different time 
signature from the drums. The 
irregular beats are particularly 

audible in “Give Me the 
Gun,” especially in the parts 
of the piece where Kinsella’s 
voice 
fades 
away 
and 

drumming takes the stage. 

Not every track is slow-

paced, 
however. 
“Desire 

Gets In The Way,” track eight 
on the LP, has a noticeably 
more 
upbeat 
sound 
in 

comparison to the rest of 
the 
collection. 
Lighter, 

dancing guitar notes and 
quicker drumming are at 
the forefront of the song as 
Kinsella proclaims “ Desire 
gets in the way / you can’t 
hide such an ugly trait.” 
The bridge of the song is 
surprisingly mellow as most 
of the instrumentals vanish 
and 
Kinsella 
tenderly 

sings “For you, I’ll remain 
/ chained to the bed we 
made.”

It’s rare for a group to 

come back full force after 
a breakup, and rarer still 
to do so after a 17 year long 
hiatus. With LP2’s warm, 
undulating sound, American 
Football proves that they 
are more than ready for the 
challenge.

O

n 
TV, 
conflict 
and 

confrontation 
are 

central. 
Any 
major 

conflict being raised is treated like 
a promise that must be delivered 
on, and if it’s never addressed, it’s 
bad TV. Almost any 
time the possibility 
of a new romantic 
pairing is floated, for 
example, those two 
people will end up 
together, even if it’s 
just one hook-up that 
never becomes more.

Most TV creates 

the false perception 
that 
interpersonal 

conflict 
is 
largely 

built on a series of dramatic 
arguments. If people keep their 
petty resentments inside and let 
them fester without confronting 
each other, eventually it’ll blow 
up into an even more explosive 
confrontation. In the real world, of 
course, most interpersonal conflicts 
are more subtle and low-scale.

In fact, in the age we live in, 

a lot of indicators of conflict 
between people come from tiny 
social media interactions. That’s 
something most TV writers avoid 
dramatizing, probably out of fear 
of the drama feeling too trivial 
and petty. But social media plays 
such a huge role in our lives now 
that it feels weird to ignore it 
entirely, especially because little 
social media occurrences can 
have surprisingly big emotional 
effects. When I haven’t talked to 
somebody in a long time, whether 
it’s because of a fight we got into 
or some subtle conflict, we often 
won’t Snapchat each other, won’t 
“like” each other’s Facebook posts, 
won’t acknowledge each other’s 
tweets. So if somebody randomly 
“likes” one of my posts for the first 
time months after a fight, it feels 

like a huge step forward, like this is 
them subtly reaching out to me to 
revive our lost friendship, or even 
just to let me know they’re not 
angry at me anymore.

But on TV, if a character 

legitimately 
felt 

sad that someone 
was liking someone 
else’s 
posts 
and 

not their own, that 
character 
would 

come 
across 
as 

the stereotype of a 
millennial teenage 
girl obsessed with 
the 
most 
trivial 

social 
media 

happenings. On TV, 

you have to create “real” drama 
to deal with. “That girl isn’t liking 
my Instagram pictures” is not 
enthralling drama. But it happens 
a lot in this modern world, so 
shouldn’t we depict it onscreen?

The best show at illustrating how 

important social media interactions 
can feel is “Man Seeking Woman,” 
an FXX sitcom that heightens the 
romantic travails of the average 
awkward 20-something guy to 
surreal 
degrees. 
One 
episode 

devotes a whole sequence to figuring 
out how Josh (Jay Baruchel, “This 
is the End”) should respond to a 
text; various consultants surround 
Josh at a conference table as if 
the fate of the world depends on 
what he sends. Michael Hogan 
(“Battlestar Galactica”) screams 
“Text ‘jk!’ ” repeatedly, and the 
stakes are extreme. But “Man 
Seeking Woman” works so well 
because it sets out to be fantastical, 
to be deliberately surreal to express 
how very real occurrences feel. 
It succeeds because it presents 
these seemingly trivial incidents 
in astronomical terms. Most shows 
can’t do that. Not every show can 
employ fantastical interludes like 

“Jane the Virgin” or “Man Seeking 
Woman” can, so these small 
internal conflicts mostly get left 
out.

Sometimes, I wish that life 

was more like TV. I wish every 
mere romantic possibility came 
to fruition, every conflict was 
exciting and every obstacle I faced 
would, in the end, result in me 
being a stronger, more resilient 
person.

I wish that, every time I was 

angry at someone for a justified 
reason, I would have the bravery to 
come out and confront them about 
what they did. I wish that, if I felt 
myself drifting from someone, I 
would immediately make a move to 
rectify it and not give a shit whether 
I came across as “powerless,” 
whether I came across as the 
person who gave more of a shit. I 
wish that, if someone was avoiding 
me or pushing me away, they would 
just tell me so I understood their 
motives. I wish that life was like 
TV, because on TV, motivations are 
usually clear, because everyone is 
always explaining themselves all 
the time. Most TV conflict could 
be solved by open and honest 
communication, and most is solved 
that way.

But in reality, the truth is 

that most of life isn’t built on 
confrontation. 
There’s 
long, 

drawn-out, lingering resentment 
that either comes out late or often 
not at all. There’s stuff that goes 
unaddressed 
because 
people 

are so utterly afraid of what 
consequences even bringing it up 
would have. A lot of times, there’s 
never really any closure. People 
have to move on without any neat 
tying of bows. Sometimes, the 
perfect cathartic confrontation is 
no more than a myth, a convenient 
storytelling device reserved for 
TV.

Contrary to what we see on the screen, life isn’t so dramatic

BEN

ROSENSTOCK

TV’s unrealistic focus on confrontation

The original “Jack Reacher” 

wasn’t exactly great. The dia-
logue was hammy and seemed 
like it would be more at home 
in a 1950s noir flick. The char-
acters 
straddled 

the line between 
boring and just 
plain 
unlikable, 

and 
the 
story 

was 
extremely 

run-of-the-mill. 
Director 
Chris-

topher 
McQuar-

rie, who would go 
on to work with 
star Tom Cruise 
again 
on 
last 

year’s excellent “Mission: Impos-
sible - Rogue Nation,” managed to 
breathe some life into the script, 
however, so it wasn’t a complete 
loss. But its sequel, “Jack Reacher: 
Never Go Back” isn’t lucky enough 
to have someone like McQuarrie 
to salvage the script. In the hands 
of director Edward Zwick (“The 
Last Samurai”), “Never Go Back” 
becomes a film that is less corny 
than the original but also expo-
nentially more generic.

The opening act of “Never Go 

Back” is actually relatively prom-
ising. Cruise and Cobie Smulders 
(“The Avengers”) have believ-
able chemistry, and the evolution 
of their relationship is shown 
through a montage of their meet-
ings by phone so that when she is 
arrested, it’s all the more under-
standable that Reacher would 
single-mindedly 
believe 
her 

innocence. Cruise and Smulders 

are the film’s greatest assets, as 
it turns out, because just about 
everything after those initial 
scenes is boring and forgettable, 
and it begins with the introduc-
tion of Reacher’s new teen side-
kick.

It’s not that young sidekicks are 

inherently bad. They aren’t, and 

they can be used to 
add further dimen-
sions to their men-
tors. Unfortunately, 
these characters are 
by and large vehi-
cles driven by angst 
and poor decision 
making, whose sole 
purpose is to act as 
damsels in distress. 
Such is the case with 
Samantha Dayton, 

played by Danika Yarosh (“Heroes 
Reborn”), who almost gets herself 
and everyone around her killed on 
at least three occasions and adds 
nothing to the overall plot besides 
an overwrought subplot in which 
Reacher, action hero extraordi-
naire, learns the value of family.

As nearly worthless as the 

Samantha character is, though, 
the villains of “Never Go Back” 
somehow manage to be worse. 
“Forgettable” barely sums up 
these men who hardly have 
names, let alone motivations and 
personalities. Robert Knepper 
(“Prison Break”) plays General 
Harkness, the main antagonist, 
who is on screen for all of two 
minutes, never giving Knepper 
the chance to make the unnerv-
ing impression that is his well-
earned bread and butter. Reacher 
and company are also pursued by 
a mercenary known only as the 

Hunter, who is about as mundane 
as his title implies and not worth 
the time it would take to criticize.

Still, “Never Go Back” could 

have been saved had Zwick craft-
ed an interesting action set piece 
or two. Again, the original “Jack 
Reacher” was nothing special, but 
the car chase between Reacher 
and the authorities was well-shot 
and legitimately exciting, hint-
ing at the talent which McQuar-
rie possessed. Zwick opts to go a 
different direction, in that all but 
two of the film’s spectacularly 
few “action” scenes are made up 
entirely of rapidly edited shots of 
pretty people running while being 
accompanied by generic chase 
music.

And “generic” seems to be the 

word that best sums up “Never 
Go Back.” Its generic plot is only 
unpredictable because the view-
er is so bored that they won’t 
bother to try to figure out where 
it’s going. Its generic characters 
come and go at the will of the 
screenwriter, creating many a 
moment of “Oh, right, that char-
acter exists.” Its generic action 
only serves to highlight what a 
tedious slog the whole thing is, 
instead of injecting any amount 
of excitement into the affair. Its 
generic villains barely feature at 
all and could be exchanged for the 
villains of almost any other action 
movie with no difference made to 
the plot. “Never Go Back” is not 
awful, but only because it’s too 
generic and mediocre in every-
thing but its lead performances to 
be truly awful. Instead, it settles 
for feeling more like a feature 
length “NCIS” episode than any-
thing else.

JEREMIAH VANDERHELM

For the Daily

‘Never Go Back’ has promise, but fails

Sequel to 2012 thriller significantly more generic than the original

PARAMOUNT

Do you have this Pokemon?

C-

“Jack Reacher: 
Never Go Back”

Ann Arbor 20 & 

Quality 16

Paramount

‘LP2’ a strong comeback

SAMANTHA LU

For the Daily

American Football scores touchdown with new release

ALBUM REVIEW
TV COLUMN

FILM REVIEW

A-

American Football

American Football

Polyvinyl Records

6A — Monday, October 24, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

