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