The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tuesday, September 12, 2017 — 5
Arts

FOREIGN FAMILY COLLECTIVE

ODESZA floats in space 
on their newest record

ODESZA’s creations are what 

space would sound like if sound 
could travel in interplanetary 
emptiness. Through A Moment 
Apart, Seattle duo Harrison 
Mills and Clayton 
Knight’s 
spiky, 

otherworldly, 
chill 
planetary 

fuzz 
spins 
a 

fresh 
take 
on 

mainstream 
electronica’s 
comparatively 
boring, 
bass 

powered bumps.

For 
a 
heavily 
electronic 

album, A Moment Apart does a 
good job of balancing vocal and 
purely 
instrumental 
tracks. 

What’s more, the album has 
great variety in its soundscape, 
ranging 
from 
the 
soaring, 

powerful titular track, to the 
easy-going “Across the Room.”

Just like in 2012’s Summer’s 

Gone, A Moment Apart opens 
with an “Intro,” a whispered 
clip of narration that sets the 
theme for the rest of the album. 
Where 2012’s “Intro” was more 
of an introduction to electronic 
music as a whole, 2017’s “Intro” 
is actually an excerpt from 2011 
film “Another Earth,” where 
one character tells another a 
story about a cosmonaut falling 
in love with sound, introducing 
an attempted metaphor for the 
listener’s experience with the 
album. As the dialogue fades 
away, “Intro” fades into “A 
Moment Apart,” immediately 
establishing the high energy 
and evocative spirit the album 
runs on right off the bat.

“Late Night” captures the 

essence of breathless midnight 
drives 
down 
city 
streets, 

complete with the jingle of 
car keys at the very beginning 

and a striking, catchy beat that 
evolves into glittering chords 
as the instrumentals pick up. 
When listening to the vivid 
chorus, I could practically 
see neon lights reflecting off 
shiny car paint. “La Ciudad” 
has a similarly bright, exciting 
sound, with the same air 

of 
nighttime 

adventures 
and 

unforgettable 
experiences. 
The 
difference 

between 
ODESZA’s 
music and EDM 
is 
especially 

apparent 
here. 

EDM 
is 
wild, 
but 
almost 

violently so, and even though 
“Late Night” and “La Ciudad” 
both have climactic moments, 
they also have softer, tenderer 
lulls. Ultimately, the two types 
differ greatly in tone and 
overall song structure from 
party music.

While Regina Spektor usually 

sticks 
to 
more 
traditional 

instrumental accompaniments 
like classical piano and guitar, 
“Just a Memory” melds her 
captivatingly smooth vocals 
with ODESZA’s full bodied, 
dramatic electronics. The song 
follows someone pining for a 
former lover: “I want you back 
/ In the middle of this fight / 
Baby come back and fight,” 
Spektor croons. The track is 
one of A Moment Apart’s more 
mellow compositions, and has 
the same bittersweet emotion 
as “Kusanagi” from 2014’s In 
Return.

“Thin 
Floors 
and 
Tall 

Ceilings” calls to mind acres 
and acres of free, unbounded 
sound. The first ten seconds 
of the track are reminiscent 
of 
summer 
nights 
spent 

stargazing, 
and 
the 
piece 

develops like a trip through 
time.

“Corners of the Earth” hits 

the sweet spot for a closing 
track; it’s slow and measured 
enough to feel like a proper 
wrap up to the album, but still 
emotive and memorable as 
a standout song all by itself. 
Australian singer RY X’s voice 
is deep and rich as he sings: 
“Tonight we run / We run 
into the sun / We run into the 
corners of / The love we choose 
to make.”

Altogether, 
the 
album 

builds upon the undeniable 
strength 
and 
breadth 
of 

ODESZA’s discography while 
still introducing new folds. 
It’s important to note how 

universal the group’s music is; 
whether a listener is completely 
new to the world of electronica 
or a seasoned expert, there’s 
bound to be something that 
satisfies any itch. ODESZA 
may be one of electronica’s 
more seasoned artists, but 
that doesn’t mean their music 
is stale or without merit, 
even given the often negative 
connotations 
surrounding 

that genre and its cousins. A 
Moment Apart shows that the 
duo is far from running out of 
unique ideas. 

SAM LU

Daily Arts Writer

A Moment 

Apart 

ODESZA 

Foreign Family 

Collective

ALBUM REVIEW

PARAMOUNT

‘Mother!’ is disgusting, 
and nothing really else

Movies, 
like 
novels, 
are 

stories. 
But, 
perhaps 
even 

more than a novel, a movie 
is like a poem. A movie takes 
the basic units of narrative — 
image and word — and turns 
them into emotion. And, as 
we’ve been told before, a poem 
should not mean 
but be. “Mother!,” 
unfortunately, 
only 
exists 
to 

mean, 
and 
falls 

apart completely if 
it steps outside the 
limitations of it’s 
allegory.

In 
“Mother!” 
Jennifer 

Lawrence (“Passengers”) is the 
young wife of Javier Bardem 
(“Skyfall”). Both spend the 
entire 
movie 
nameless 
as 

they move around each other 
in 
their 
isolated 
mansion. 

Lawrence is fixing up the 
house, rebuilding it from the 
ashes of a fire. She walks 
around 
barefoot, 
plastering 

walls and trying desperately 
to show her dismissive poet 
husband how much she loves 
him.

Their home is gradually 

invaded by a couple, also 
nameless, who are fans of the 
poet’s work. Lawrence and 
the audience watch in awe 
and Bardem lets the couple 
take over their home. It turns 
out, their stay opens Pandora’s 
box and soon the house is 
bursting 
with 
unnaturally 

rude houseguests who multiply 

exponentially and inexplicably. 
Lawrence’s patience is pushed 
to a breaking point.

If “Mother!” stayed in the 

world of dark domestic comedy, 
it might work. But, alas, it was 
made by Hollywood’s heaviest 
hand, 
Darren 
Arnofsky 

(“Noah”). So instead “Mother!” 
throws itself down the allegory 
rabbit 
hole 
and 
promptly 

spirals out of control.

Allegory 
is 

tricky 
because 

it’s easy to let 
the 
allegory 

take 
complete 

narrative 
control. Movies 
like 
“Tree 
of 

Life” or “Natural 

Born Killers” work because 
they let you fall so deeply in 
them that you forget X equals 
Y and This means That. They 
prioritize being over meaning. 
That’s where this film’s issues 
begin. It’s too caught up in it’s 
own tricks to be anything more 
than the sum of them.

It doesn’t help that the film’s 

choice 
allegory 
is 
biblical. 

And the entire Bible at that. 
As people pour into Mother’s 
house it becomes a microcosm 
for all the evils of the world 
— a reverse Eden of sorts. 
Similarly, Mother becomes an 
embodiment of all women — 
silenced, ignored, infantilized 
and 
ultimately 
brutally 

attacked.

I’m sure there’s a long list 

of things Darren Arnofsky 
can’t do, but first on that list 
is subtlety. That’s not a death 
sentence, but it can be an 

Achilles heel. For Arnofsky, 
the latter is creeping closer 
and closer to the former. 
There is something essential 
missing from the film — depth, 
profundity, something more 
challenging than allegory and 
violence.

Arnofsky’s films are visceral 

— I left the theater craving a hot 
shower and a Valium. Which 
is to say, the only emotion 
he’s managed to convey thus 

far in his twenty-year career 
is disgust. It’s become quite 
apparent that he’s run out of 
tricks. “Mother!” gave me cold 
sweats and confirmation that 
no matter how hard I try I will 
never be compelled by the deep 
unpleasantness of Arnofsky’s 
world. 

Disgust is boring because 

disgust 
is 
easy. 
Especially 

when it’s achieved, as it is 
in 
“Mother!” 
via 
a 
rapid 

succession 
of 
disturbing 

images. That’s why I’m hesitant 
to label this a “horror” film. 
There’s no horror in “Mother!” 
and it’s sorely lacking for that 
fact.

“Mother!” is nothing but a 

movie made for film school 
term papers and sub-reddit 
echo-chambers. Its focus was 
so far in post-production that it 
forgot to be any good.

MADELEINE GAUDIN

Senior Arts Editor

“Mother!”

Paramount Pictures

Quality 16, Ann 

Arbor 20

FILM REVIEW

After four years separated, 

audiences are brought back 
to the universe of “Top of the 
Lake,” a confusing, depressive 
and riveting show. Detective 
Robin 
Griffin 
(Elisabeth 

Moss, “Mad Men”) returns 
for another case, 
visibly 
shaken 

after the ordeal 
in New Zealand. 
After 
her 

investigation 
of 

the sexual abuse 
of a twelve-year 
old, Griffin ends 
up having solved 
little-to-nothing, and in worse 
trouble 
than 
she 
started. 

Long story short: she shot the 
architect, Al Parker (David 
Wenham, 
“Killing 
Time”), 

of the pedophilia ring after 
discovering his involvement, 
but he survived, and is now 
bringing a civil suit against 

Griffin.

The day she arrives back in 

Sydney, Griffin is mocked by 
cadets who reference her and 
Al during a training exercise, 
which causes her to snap in 
response 
to 
obvious 
post-

traumatic stress disorder. At 
a different place, a pastel-blue 
suitcase is thrown off a cliff into 
the ocean. Shots of the suitcase 

in the water are 
used as an anchor 
between 
scenes. 

The object, which 
houses the body of 
a young Chinese 
woman, 
finally 

shores up. Griffin 
heads out after a 
call to the station, 

and delivers the cheesiest line 
she can while opening the case: 
“Hello, darling. Wanna tell me 
what you saw?”

One of the strengths of 

“Top of the Lake” is its focus 
on 
female-led 
narratives. 

Detective 
Griffin 
is 
a 
no 

nonsense woman eager to get 

back into work after her ordeal 
in New Zealand. She is hastily 
joined by another woman in 
the force, Miranda Hilmarson 
(Gwendoline Christie, “Game 
of Thrones”), to solve the case 
of a suitcase washed up at sea. 
Inside the suitcase is the corpse 
of a Chinese prostitute, which 
thus gives the name to this 
season of the series. The other 

most interesting characters in 
the series, Robin’s daughter 
Mary (Alice Englert, “Beautiful 
Creatures”) and her adoptive 
mother Julia (Nicole Kidman, 
“Big Little Lies”) drive the 
action forth. The men, by 

and large, are on the sides, 
watching the action play out. 
It’s an interesting inversion 
that follows the current surge 
of female-led drama.

For all its strengths, “Top 

of the Lake” does rely on a few 
cliches to tell its story. The 
insights in each characters’s 
lives are fairly one-dimensional, 
especially Detective Griffin. 
She falls into seeking work as 
a way to mask or cover up her 
pain from her earlier case, and 
her male colleagues treat her 
as an off-the-rails, emotionally 
volatile woman, which could 

be either a negative or honest 
representation — you decide. 
Mary, who is seventeen, is about 
to run off with her 41-year-old, 
brothel-running 
boyfriend, 

with little motivation except 
teenage 
rebellion. 
Finally, 

Griffin’s new sidekick Miranda 
is only defined by her eagerness 
to assist. The problem is likely 
to be remedied in further 
episodes, but the show would 
benefit 
from 
exploring 
the 

interior lives of each characters.

Womanhood, and the women 

that do not heed its traditional 
call, are leading this season 

of “Top of the Lake,” giving 
space 
for 
some 
interesting 

interplay 
across 
multiple 

dynamics. 
There’s 
Miranda, 

who is striking and tall, not 
traditionally 
feminine, 
then 

Robin, who has been raped and 
mistreated, 
rebellious 
Mary 

and finally her mother, Julia, 
who divorces her husband and 
has an affair with a woman. All 
these levels of class, appearance 
and generation are ripe with 
drama and action, which will be 
sure to draw audiences in. The 
only question is — how soon are 
they going to have to wait?

JACK BRANDON

Daily Arts Writer

SUNDANCE

Women take the lead in 
latest ‘Top of the Lake’

“Top of the 

Lake”

Sundance

Sundays 9 p.m.

The album 
builds upon 

the undeniable 
strength and 

breadth of 
ODESZA’s 
discography

Disgust is boring 
because disgust is 

easy

Womanhood, 
and the women 
are leading this 

season