Arts
TBS breaks 2000s mold
Remember the last time you
had a truly cathartic release at a
concert — who was there and what
songs you screamed. Nostalgia
holds an undeniable power over
musical experiences, but it can also
become toxic when exploited in the
present. In a world of never ending
anniversary tour announcements,
it’s refreshing to find a band stand
out among the rest without the
crutch of nostalgia. On August 13th,
Taking Back Sunday lit the sold out
Crofoot in Pontiac ablaze, setting
the standard for early 2000s emo
bands still fortunate enough to be
playing shows.
Calling Taking Back Sunday
an “emo band” in 2017 is a bit of a
stretch. Coming off the release of
2016’s incredible record Tidal Wave,
the band has proven their ability
for constructive change, making a
record with an unprecedented rock
atmosphere for the band without
straying too far from what fans have
come to expect of their music. Fully
cognizant of their fanbase’s desires,
Taking Back Sunday’s setlists
actively engage all the eras of their
music — frontman Adam Lazzara
even took the time to explain the
inclusion of “Everything Must
Go,” a deep cut from their typically
overlooked record New Again.
I’ve now seen Taking Back
Sunday both pre- and post-Tidal
Wave, and it’s safe to say the new
material expertly blends with
the old. Where contemporaries
have begun to falter (see: literally
all of Fall Out Boy’s music post-
reunion), the music on Tidal Wave
fits perfectly with the rest of their
catalogue included in their sets.
Opening with the title track and
throwing “Death Wolf” in the
middle of the performance did
nothing to dampen the energy;
if anything changed, a marginal
amount of people didn’t know all
the words to sing along.
Now you find yourself halfway
through Taking Back Sunday’s set.
You’re out of breath and sweaty,
packed like a sardine in the crowd
of drunk young adults. None of this
should be remotely comfortable,
but you just finished dancing your
ass off to the rock ‘n’ roll of “Death
Wolf” when the band launches into
the aching ballad of “You’re So Last
Summer.” Without even thinking,
you’re screaming, “Boys like you
are a dime a dozen!” because that’s
the infectious relationship Taking
Back Sunday have with their fans.
Adam Lazzara and John Nolan
are
natural
performers.
They
easily banter with each other, the
rest of the band and even audience
members. Anecdotes and jokes
pass fluidly between songs, except
for a long story on how Lazzara
used to sing and dance in his
kitchen pretending to be Billie Joe
Armstrong before performing their
toned-down acoustic cover of Green
Day’s “She.” By sprinkling nostalgia
here and there throughout the
night, Taking Back Sunday kept
long time fans emotionally engaged
without the corniness of living in
the past.
It’d be amiss to not mention
Taking Back Sunday’s support
from All Get Out and Every Time
I Die. The former opened the show
with their gorgeous and earnest alt-
punk tunes, while the later all but
destroyed everybody that dared to
enter the pit with their violent, high-
speed blend of hardcore and metal.
With diverse, talented openers (and
only two of them thankfully), the
show quickly ramped up the energy
before Taking Back Sunday even
took the stage.
And this is exactly why Taking
Back Sunday continues to thrive
today. They’ve grown from their
roots, branching into a band more
beautiful, more diverse than their
past without ignoring it. They
didn’t miss a beat the entire night,
bombarding
the
crowd
with
anthem after anthem, old and new.
If Taking Back Sunday predicted
anything on their first record, it’s
that they will always have the mic
and the crowd will always have the
mosh pit.
DOMINIC POLSINELLI
Daily Arts Writer
Food, culture and
code-switching
It’s not fun to say the
words tandoori chicken. The
dish itself is fine — a quite
tasty preparation that’s been
successfully
imported
and
popularized in the US—but
pronouncing the actual words,
as an Indian-American kid,
is kind of a chore. Same with
vindaloo, or biryani, or Qatar,
even. It’s that awkward choice
you’re asked to a make in a
split-second: do I say this the
American, Anglicized way to
make sure this conversation
continues smoothly, or do I
flex a little bit and pronounce
this how it’s meant to be,
thereby ensuring a slight but
notable uptick in discomfort
levels around the room?
But comparatively, tandoori
is a walk in the park. My
family is from Kerala, in the
southernmost part of India,
and our cuisine (and culture,
for that matter), is wildly
different than chicken tikka
and paneer. It’s more seafood-
based, heavier on the coconut
milk and bananas, and our
vegetarian options are much
more robust (for the sake of
simplicity, we won’t dive into
the varying branches based on
religion). Along with a starkly
different
food
landscape,
however, is a language that
is just as foreign, and so it
is that saying the seemingly
innocuous word dosa in front
of a bunch of white people
is
a
peculiarly
stressful
experience.
Try ordering idli off of
a menu at your local South
Indian vegetarian spot. Or
pronouncing the word puttu
without sounding like you’re
mocking it. Maybe even take
a stab at my last name! It’s a
linguistic hellscape down here
on the humid, rain-heavy tip
of India, and for people who
can’t roll their r’s or lay down a
“hard t,” it’s nearly impossible
to navigate.
Sure, this is an ostensibly
stupid
thing
to
complain
about; the social anxiety of
immigrants pronouncing meals
on a menu is on par with “the
people of Bomont not being
allowed to dance” on the wide-
ranging scale of legitimate
oppression. But what do you do
when faced with the choice?
Let’s all agree that there’s no
one worse than the dude who,
in the middle of an otherwise
normal description of food,
decide
to
pronounce
salsa
verde as if he recently took
a missionary trip to rebuild
schools in Mexico. But for the
immigrant —or, in this case,
the first-generation child — to
whitewash the pronunciation
of your homeland’s food is
odd,
and
uncomfortable.
The history of that dish, and
the history of your family,
awkwardly brushed aside for
convenience. There’s a tinge
of guilt whenever you do it; it’s
an internal acknowledgement
that you have, for the moment,
sold out to appease these white
devils, even though you know
better. It’s a microcosm of
that age-old, tiresome cliché
of a conundrum: to assimilate
or to retain one’s heritage, all
magnified by the order at a
dinner table.
Code-switching is, on the
whole, a much larger and
more fascinating phenomenon
to be considered. But in the
context of food and its weirdly
specific customs, it takes on a
more dynamic meaning. For
the foreigner, eating a plate
of puttu and kadala curry
(with your hands, of course)
is, if for only a moment, a
brief glimpse into a land miles
away; for the immigrant, a
banana leaf covered in the
offerings of a traditional sadya
— choru, aviyal, thoran, and
countless more tiny mounds
of
exhaustively
prepared
side dishes — is an evocative
snapshot of a phantom home,
with all the emotional weight
and cultural baggage that it
portends. That split-second of
hesitation, then — the moment
before
“doe-suh”
or
“tho-
shuh” — is often the wait of a
lifetime.
CONCERT REVIEW
FOOD COLUMN
COURTESY OF ALEXIS BACKUS
NABEEL
CHOLLAMPAT
It’s a linguistic
hellscape down
here on the
humid, rain-heavy
tip of India
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tuesday, September 5, 2017 — 9A