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