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Thursday, June 22, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS

‘Crack-Up’ is expansive

By SEAN LANG

Daily Arts Writer

Might as well add Crack-Up to the 

list of albums whose singles spoil 
their opening tracks. The album, 
an epic across space and time, is the 
first by Fleet Foxes in six years after 
“artistic differences” led to some 
form of break-up after 2011’s Help-
lessness Blues. Crack-Up begins with 
the whisper of “I Am All That I Need 
/ Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar,” 
but explodes one minute into the 
track as “The band kicks the loner 
off the stage” — according to the 
liner notes, which are interspersed 
through songs, drawing a narrative 
out of the album. Had we not been 
exposed to “Third of May / daiga-
hara,” “Fool’s Errand” or “If You 
Need To, Keep Time On Me,” this 
explosion would have carried all the 
weight in the world as the beloved 
folk rock band from Seattle transi-
tioned from indefinite silence to a 
grandeur even greater in scale than 
their first two efforts.

Between Helplessness Blues and 

Crack-Up, vocalist Robin Pecknold 
— also the driving creative force of 
the project — enrolled in literature 
courses at Columbia University in 
2012, a decision he has cited as hav-
ing a serious effect on not just his 
music, but his life. His venture into 
academia is evident on the surface 
level with references to Beowulf 
— “Mearcstapa” is named for the 
legend’s antagonist, Grendel — and 
Julius Caesar — both in “Cassius” 
and “I Should See Memphis.”

The album name itself, Crack-

Up, comes from an essay by F. Scott 
Fitzgerald of the same name, wide-
ly quoted for his idea that one of 
the greatest marks of intelligence 
is the ability to engage with and 

understand both sides of an argu-
ment and still function. It’s hard to 
tell exactly how this plays into the 
album’s themes, and some may write 
the album off as a slew of semi-pre-
tentious name-drops, but there is 
a sense of duality to the album: the 
city versus the ocean, the individual 
versus the collective, January versus 
June, and the homophones “wide/
white” and “heedless/heatless” on 
“Keep Time On Me.”

Still, literary references can’t in 

and of themselves give a truly cre-
ative sense of greater meaning to a 
new work. Rest assured, Pecknold 
reaches inward just as often as he 
does outward. The album’s first 
single “Third of May / daigahara” is 
serious self-reflection through time, 
ultimately a triumphant yet melan-
cholic ode to the passage of time and 
the loneliness that can come with 
it. Twice on the song he asks “Was 
I too slow?” The first time, he then 
asks “Did you change overnight?” 
The second time, “Did I change over-
night?” Pecknold might be looking 
for someone to blame, but he seems 
to realize it may be himself.

The song is also startlingly inter-

woven in the band’s history. Help-
lessness Blues was released on May 
third, so when Pecknold sings “It 
all fell in line on the third of May / 
As if it were designed / Painted in 
sand to be washed away,” it feels like 
he is acknowledging that the band 
couldn’t have lasted, or at least not 
then. May third is also the birthday 
of Pecknold’s close friend and band-
mate Skyler Skjelset, and the line 
about congregating at “the firing 
line” is a reference to a painting also 
named Third of May by Francisco 
Goya — perhaps further evidence of 
his return to school or, more likely, a 
happy coincidence that he stumbled 

upon the painting outside of his for-
mal studies.

While enrolled at Columbia, Pec-

knold also took up surfing according 
to an interview with Rolling Stone. It 
may be a stretch, but the way he talks 
about being humbled by the sport 
in the interview and one quote in 
particular — “You’re new when you 
get out of the water” — make it feel 
like the new hobby has influenced 
his songwriting. More so than Fleet 
Foxes and Helplessness Blues (save 
for the titular track), Crack-Up jux-
taposes the hugeness of nature with 
the, well, helplessness of humankind. 
Choices like the aforementioned 
opening of “I Am All That I Need” 
and the album’s obsession with the 
ocean — every song contains some 
reference to an ocean, sea, flood or 
tides — lend to this, creating the feel-
ing that the album is just big in a geo-
graphical sense.

Since completing the band’s tour 

in support of Helplessness Blues in 
2012, Pecknold has been on a jour-
ney through himself and through 
academia in an unfamiliar city. He 
has shed his lumberjack look for 
something cleaner and seems to 
have given the “capital-q” Ques-
tions of his life 
a lot of thought. 
The result is an 
expansive epic, an 
album that both 
builds satisfyingly 
on the legacy left 
by the first two but also feels like 
a fresh starting point. In a recent 
interview with Pitchfork, Pec-
knold is quoted as saying “I’d like 
to just make another album right 
now.” If Crack-Up is any indication 
of what’s to come, we should take 
as much as we can get.

By JEREMIAH VANDERHELM

Daily Arts Writer

Let’s start this “Cars 3” review 

by talking about Rocky. The Ital-
ian Stallion’s most recent outings, 
“Rocky Balboa” and “Creed,” respec-
tively featured Rocky dealing with a 
world that was seemingly leaving 
him behind and training the son of 
his late best friend. I open with this 
because everything done in those 
two separate movies, “Cars 3” tries 
to do in one. In one movie, Lightning 
McQueen (Owen Wilson, “Mas-
terminds”) is supposed to come to 
terms with the changing landscape 
of racing while mentoring a younger 
character and making peace with his 
legacy. Its story hinges on these arcs, 
yet by the time the credits roll, nei-
ther of them has been given enough 
attention to carry the movie. In its 
rush to do everything, “Cars 3” does 
nothing instead.

It’s hard to even decipher what 

the main story of the movie is 

supposed to be. 
The gist of it at 
first seems to be 
that 
Lightning 

has to prove that 
he’s not washed 
up. That’s simple 

enough and potentially emotional. 
The problem is that it’s not clear 
who Lightning has to prove that to. 
Is it himself? No, he’s as confident as 
ever. His friends? They barely fea-
ture. The only people who we ever 
see doubt Lightning only appear on 
TV screen to remind you that this is 
allegedly an underdog story, but by 
the end, even the crowd is still on 
Lightning’s side. It’s like the ordinar-
ily brilliant minds at Pixar wanted to 
tell an underdog story but forgot to 
add the underdog. There’s no doubt 
on anyone’s part — least of all the 
audience’s — that he will win until 
far too late in the movie.

If Lightning’s struggle had been 

focused on and developed a bit more 
it could have worked and worked 
well, but then comes the other part 
of the story: Lightning mentoring 

newcomer Cruz Ramirez (Cristela 
Alonzo, “Cristela”). In theory, Cruz is 
supposed to share the spotlight with 
Lightning. It’s clear this it’s meant to 
be her story as much as it is his, but 
as with Lightning’s struggle, she is 
never given enough focus to make 
her anything other than a jumped-
up side character in her own movie. 
It’s hard to care about her when she 
is distracting from his story and he is 
distracting from hers.

“Cars 3” should have either been 

Lightning’s story with Cruz playing 
a supporting role or vice versa. As it 
is, it splits its focus between the two, 
seems to finally put it on Lightning, 
then pulls back and puts it on Cruz, 
only to finally cop out in the worst 
way possible and try to give them 
both Big Emotional Endings without 
having properly done the character 
or story work to earn those moments. 
It cheats and continues to cheat even 
when it makes no sense. Finally, in 
the late second act, “Cars 3” arrives 
at an interesting place that could 
potentially sustain both stories. But 
by that time, it’s too late. It can only 
spend a few scenes in that interesting 
new setting with its interesting new 
characters before it’s time for the cli-
max that no one in the audience will 
care enough to get excited for.

As per the Pixar norm, the ani-

mation is quite spectacular. The 
environments are nearly photore-
alistic, especially during the oth-
erwise lackluster racing scenes, 
and that complements the more 
cartoony designs of the characters 
to create an effect like the one on 
display in “The Good Dinosaur.” 
That’s almost all that can be said for 
“Cars 3,” though. It’s not even clear 
what the lesson kids are supposed 
to learn is. Do your best? Even if this 
wasn’t Pixar — possibly the best sto-
rytellers not just in animation but 
in cinema itself — that’s boilerplate 
and boring. But in a way, that sums 
up “Cars 3” quite well. For a normal 
animation house, this would be a 
subpar, pointless flick. For the mas-
ters themselves, it comes close to 
being their worst work so far.

‘Cars 3’ crashes 

Cars 3 

Walt Disney 
Studios

Rave Cinemas

 MUSIC REVIEW

MOVIE REVIEW

NONESUCH RECORDS

Fleet Foxes pose for a photoshoot.

DISNEY STUDIOS

Lightning McQueen smirks at his rival.

Crack-Up

Fleet Foxes

Nonesuch Records

 

MUSIC REVIEW
MOVIE REVIEW

