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April 05, 2017 - Image 5

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The Michigan Daily

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I just finished devouring

“S-Town,” a new podcast from
Serial and This American Life.
I expected the story to follow
in the true-crime footsteps
of its predecessors and, for
the first few installments at
least, that appeared to be the
direction it was heading. Lured
by the promise of a small town
whodunit, journalist Brian Reed
falls instead into the life of John
B. McLemore, a contradictorily
misanthropic and charismatic
horologist.
The
product
is,

without
spoiling
anything,

much more compelling that
any small town / true crime /
anything I’ve consumed in a
long time.

It made me think about where

I come from. If you had asked me
in high school, I would have told
you I was living in an S-town
(short for Shit Town, the name
McLemore gives his hometown
of Woodstock, Alabama).

But now I love it. In a very

un-pop punk (or maybe very
pop punk, I’m no expert, ask
Dom Polsinelli) turn of fate
that my mom has only been
predicting since the hatred
began, I feel deeply nostalgic for
my hometown. At first I wasn’t
exactly sure how I got here,
to this weird state of pseudo-
heartsickness for a place I’d
hated with all the angst of my
adolescence.

I grew up in Austin, Texas,

the very blue capital of a very
red state that I loved to hate.
And, while Austin has grown
up quite a bit in the years since I
left it, the LA-expats gentrifying
the East Side or the 10 new
buildings on the skyline aren’t
why I’ve grown nostalgic for it.

I’ve fallen in love with my

hometown by watching movies
in, around and about it.

The first time I registered

my
hometown
on
screen

was in “Whip It!” the Drew
Barrymore / Ellen Page movie
about
roller
derby
girls.
I

rented it on iTunes to watch on
my tiny iPod Nano screen on

an airplane because it was in
my Genius recommendations
(that sentence really captures a
moment in technological time).
And, despite watching on a
screen the size of a thumbnail,
I was struck when Ellen Page
got off the bus in front of Lucy
in Disguise. Not only was it
Austin, it was my Austin, a part
of my hometown that I could
recognize in a moment.

But
the
real
king
of

Austin movies is, of course,
Linklater. In Austin, “Dazed &

Confused” has this odd sort of
cultural currency whereby it’s
everyone’s favorite movie and
still impossibly cool.

Maybe because of my age

or maybe because of the type
of quiet, artistic kid I was
growing up, I’ve always been
partial to “Boyhood.” And in the
years since it came out — right
around the same time I put my
hometown in my rearview —
I’ve come back to it again and
again. And that has to mean
something.
“Boyhood”
isn’t

anyone’s bingey Netflix go-to.

The facts of my life and

Mason’s
in
“Boyhood”
are

more dissimilar than they are
alike. Cosmically, I had it much
easier: consistent father figure,
no abusive stepparents. But
emotionally, I see a lot of myself
in him. I can recognize the
sort of detachment that comes
with growing into shyness and
introspection.

Little things overlap — we’re

almost the same age, we both
discovered a love of art in
high school, we both went to
the “Harry Potter” midnight
releases (at the same bookstore
nonetheless), camped in Big

Bend.

But what really gets me, what

gets me every single time, is
that scene in “Boyhood” in the
bowling alley. Because that’s my
bowling alley. That’s Dart Bowl.
It’s a space I inhabited long
before I saw it on the screen.
I’ve eaten the enchiladas and
rolled my eyes over not being
allowed to get bumpers in that
same physical space. I went
there with my middle school
gym class and for my brother’s
birthday parties. Each time I see
it I get this pang in my heart, a
little gasp of recognition. And
I’ve not completely figured out
why, even now, I get emotional
thinking about a bowling alley
in North Austin.

It’s
the
space
and
the

recognition of space that makes
me feel the most nostalgic, even
when the facts of our lives line
up — like when I went to an
Astros game for my birthday
— seeing a physical space I’ve
spent time in is more powerful.
When Mason and his father go
camping in Perdernales State
Park, the shrubby cedar trees
and clay creek beds look like
home. The natural space makes
me feel heartsick for the creek
behind my own house.

And I feel proud in an odd

way when I see the landscape
of my childhood on screen.
Movies like “Boyhood” give
me the strange opportunity to
see the details of my own life
through someone else’s eyes.
In that way, “Boyhood” feels
like my memories, but it doesn’t
exactly look like them. That
level of detachment gives me
the distance, which, in addition
of my current physical distance,
to learn to love the place I’d
dedicated my teen years to
hating.

And so, I wonder how the

people of Woodstock, Alabama
that listened to “S-Town” feel
about their hometown after
having someone else — an
outsider — tell them a version of
its story.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, April 5, 2017 — 5A

Local Natives’s Royal Oak
show nostalgic, energetic

LOMA VISTA

Almost four years ago, I

listened to Local Natives for the
first time. After having spent the
entire day lounging at my family’s
timeshare on Lake Michigan,
Spotify’s radio feature led me to
“Airplanes,” “Who Knows Who
Cares” and “Wide Eyes,” songs to
which I would watch the sun set
many times that summer. After
chronicling the most relaxing
summer in my personal history,
they returned two years later as
the soundtrack to long drives to
and from club soccer practice.
The
perfect
soundtrack
for

springtime,
intricately
woven

harmonies always high in either
energy or emotion — oftentimes
both. I remember one drive in
particular after an especially
difficult
practice,
which

culminated in diving into Reeds
Lake with a teammate and still-
close friend in a moment that
was complemented perfectly by
the youthful exuberance of Local
Natives.

Years after having cemented

a firm love for Gorilla Manor, the
band’s debut, and Hummingbird,
their more emotionally reflective
second album, listening to lead
single “Past Lives” in a friend’s
screened-in porch during a humid
July night was cathartic in more
ways than one.

On Friday, March 31, at Royal

Oak Music Theater, the opening
notes of “Past Lives” brought all
of those memories back to life as
guitarist-vocalist Taylor Rice’s
voice cuts through the gleeful
anticipation of the room, almost
as visible as the over-the-top
fog pouring from the stage. The
audience visibly loosens up over
the course of the song, and after
its close, the band launches into
Gorilla
Manor
classic
“Wide

Eyes,” delivering on all of the
vigor
of
the
studio-recorded

version and then some.

Although
Rice
announces

that the band will be playing a
lot of new material, four of the
first six songs are from their first

two albums — thankfully for
anyone who found Sunlit Youth
an unnecessary turn toward the
indie-pop mainstream. “Villainy”
follows “Wide Eyes,” and after
is the devastating “You & I,” a
cornerstone
of
Hummingbird

with its soaring-yet-sorrowful
nature. The band plays the heavily
percussive “Wooly Mammoth”
and “Airplanes,” a homage to
multi-instrumentalist-vocalist
Kelcey Ayer’s grandfather, before
stopping to offer some between-
songs banter.

Rice takes a moment to ask, once

again, how everyone is doing, and
then asks whether the audience
is familiar with the feeling of
instantaneously falling in love
with a stranger, someone seen
just for a moment on the subway
and then gone forever. By the time
he has finished the sentiment
feels overwrought, but its core
is still relatable. This is what the
next song, “Jellyfish,” is based
on, says Rice. Here, the musical
performance
gains
another

dimension, the screen behind the
band pulsating in different hues of
blue and green, almost emulating
an actual jellyfish, rendering into
hyperactive silhouettes the five
men of local natives.

Next are “Heavy Feet” and

Sunlit Youth highlight “Coins,”
followed by the band’s most recent
track, “I Saw You Close Your
Eyes” — the song was originally
made available only to those who
were willing to literally close
their eyes. Laurel, frontwoman of
opener Little Scream, then joins
the band for duet “Dark Days,”
an unremarkable track which has
for some reason or another been
chosen as perhaps the best off of
Sunlit Youth by fans, according
to Spotify streaming and iTunes
purchasing data. Here, Rice stops
to thank everyone for coming and
reminds us that, thanks to their
partnership with Plus 1, $1 from
every ticket purchase will go
toward organizations that work to
prevent sexual assault.

After “Ceilings,” the band

plays — for the first time live
— their cover of “Ultralight
Beam,” which is overwhelmingly

more impressive in person than
via
Spotify,
with
harmonies

seemingly designed solely to coax
out goosebumps. Now, all but
Rice and Ayer walk offstage. Ayer
announces that this next one is
particularly special to him, and
that he wants to make it special for
us, before beginning “Columbia,”
a song written in the memory
of his mother. Unfortunately, a
large part of the audience doesn’t
seem to care — “this is the cost
of breaking into the popular
mainstream,” I tell myself — but
the song builds, and about two
minutes in, the other three walk
on. The sound becomes larger; it
swells and breaks and there is no
better way to capture nostalgia,
longing, loving, and the sorrow of
leaving in four minutes.

The
band
then
turns

its
mourning
outward,

acknowledging the dire state of
national affairs — “a lot of people
have been fucked over in the past
six months,” says Rice — before
playing “Fountain of Youth,” a
cheesy, overly indulgent ode to
the power of youth. The song itself
feels too performative to hold
weight, but one line in particular
— “I have waited so long, Mrs.
President” — sits funny. The
originally inspirational message
of the feels soured considerably
since September.

Perhaps
intentionally,
the

band then turns back the clock to
2009. The first show they played
in Detroit, and the first time they
played this next song live, they
played in a room below freezing
“to five people.” “If you know
any of the words, please sing
along,” says Rice. “Who Knows
Who Cares” follows, fittingly,
and the band walks off for an
unconvincing couple of minutes
before returning for “Masters”
and “Sun Hands,” during which
Rice floats himself out over the
crowd, surfing for a couple of
minutes before breaking it down
onstage. In semi-classic fashion,
Ayer, after noticing that his
guitar’s neck had broken during
the song, throws it down onto the
stage, its pieces littering as the
band exits.

SEAN LANG

Daily Arts Writer

CONCERT REVIEW

MADELEINE

GAUDIN

‘Boyhood’ and learning to

love my hometown

FILM COLUMN

IFC

Want to know the worst type

of television? Not bad television,
although that’s a solid guess. No,
forgettable television is the worst.
Forgettable television is similar to
boring television, but it’s more than
that — it’s those series that so utterly
fail to distinguish themselves that,
once an episode ends, it retreats
to the back of our consciousness.
This is precisely the sort of show
that “Nobodies,” TV Land’s newest
comedic foray, proves to be, leaving
nothing in the way of a lasting
impression due to its poor writing
and easily replaceable cast of actual
nobodies.

Immediately
upon
watching

“Nobodies,” the show’s deficiencies
are evident with its anonymous
cast. As the series’ title indicates,
the stars of “Nobodies” are, in
fact, nobodies — they’re mainly

screenwriters whose little acting
experience has come through
minor roles or parts as voice actors.
The cast’s inexperience is apparent
as they struggle to develop any
chemistry. Playing fictionalized
versions
of
themselves,
Larry

Dorf (“The Looney Tunes Show”),
Hugh Davidson (“Mike Tyson
Mysteries”) and Rachel Ramras
(“Frank TV”) all fail to bring much
of anything to their characters or
consistently generate laughs. While
its core characters do not deliver,
“Nobodies”
benefits
from
an

excellent cameo by Jason Bateman
(“Arrested Development”), who
is hilarious in his all-too-brief
appearance as himself. Although
strong
in
his
role,
Bateman

ultimately receives too little screen-
time to make up for the rest of the
cast’s weaknesses.

Although the cast of “Nobodies”

doesn’t do the series any favors,
the actors aren’t given much to
work with due to the show’s weak

premise and lack of a strong focus.
In “Nobodies,” Davidson, Dorf
and Ramras meet with Paramount
Pictures about picking up their
script, “Mr. First Lady,” as a feature
film. Since they aren’t known in
Hollywood, they are forced to try
and convince Bateman and comedic
icon Melissa McCarthy (“Spy”) to
star in the movie. It’s not a terrible
concept in theory, but it’s a niche
type of story that leaves “Nobodies”
with limited room for growth. The
series also seems to lose sight of this
basic plotline, as scenes throughout
the pilot frequently focusing more
on Davidson, Dorf and Ramras’s
personal lives rather than their
efforts to make “Mr. First Lady”
come to the big screen. While
these scenes do offer an interesting
perspective into their lives, they
often meander and run a few
minutes too long.

“Nobodies” is further dragged

down by its writing, which often
spoon-feeds viewers pieces of the

plot. The series appears resigned
to telling audiences much of its
plot points rather than showing
them, detracting from the show’s
overall quality. In an especially
obvious example of this, one
scene features Dorf, Ramras and
Davidson debating the future of
“Mr. First Lady,” with Ramras
stating, “I can’t quit because I’m
a single mom with a child.” Such a
bland line just dumps plot details on
viewers, leading them to question
why “Nobodies” doesn’t attempt to

depict Ramras’s child or otherwise
convey that Ramras is a single
mother using less direct phrasing.

While
“Nobodies”
fails
to

consistently produce laughs, the
show does succeed when relying on
raunchier humor. When Davidson,
Dorf and Ramras allow their less
family-friendly styles of humor
to emerge, the result is actually
pretty funny. For example, in one
no-holds-barred
scene,
Ramras

argues with Dorf and Davidson
about how to talk to McCarthy’s

husband about their film, and
Ramras loudly declares, “He’ll feel
gangbanged…
gangbanged,
like

he’s ganged up on.” Scenes like
these should become the norm for
“Nobodies” if it aspires to prove
itself something other than a
complete flop.

Overall, “Nobodies” is a dud that

doesn’t offer any memorable bits of
humor or semblance of a succinct,
engaging
storyline,
making
it

utterly forgettable television at its
finest.

TV LAND

TV REVIEW
Don’t consider tuning into
TV Land’s new ‘Nobodies’

CONNOR GRADY

Daily Arts Writer

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