6A — Monday, October 2, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Manchester brings emo

Before they took the stage, I 

had practically no clue what the 
Manchester Orchestra sound 
was. I vividly remember seeing 
Foxing and Tigers Jaw — two 
of my favorites — announced 
as openers for this tour, hitting 
stages I never even dreamed 
they’d reach when I was 16. 
Yet, by Manchester Orchestra’s 
moniker, I assumed they were a 
plain-Jane indie outfit. I could 
not have been more wrong.

After I was knocked on my 

ass by Manchester Orchestra’s 
performance, the brilliance in 
their choice of tour-mates hit 
me like a truck.

Foxing’s 
elaborate 

compositions 
and 
powerful 

presence set the mood at the 
Fillmore in Detroit. They’re 
a band that is really hard 
to ignore just by the sheer 
force of their music, and even 
though the stage was far larger 
than any I’d seen them play 
on, frontman Conor Murphy 
demanded attention with his 
soaring vocals and occasional 
trumpeting. 
The 
beautiful 

band even did us the service 
of playing a brand new song 
off their forthcoming record, 
which showed promise.

Next came indie rock outfit 

Tigers Jaw. Fresh off the release 
of their album spin this year, 
the band played a surprisingly 
lengthy set, full of new songs 
with a sprinkling of classics. 
Singles like “Guardian” and 
“June” from this year’s release 
still hold up as some of the most 
solid of the year, while “The 
Sun” and “Chemicals” have 
remained staples in their sets 
for a while now. Truthfully, 
I 
think 
everyone 
on 
this 

planet should be seeing and 
hearing Tigers Jaw, and their 
performance last Wednesday 
only reaffirmed my devotion. 
Their mix of an emo sensibility 
and commercial accessibility 
of wonderfully composed indie 
punk rock make them all too 
easy to fall in love with.

Manchester 
Orchestra 

proceeded to rip through a 17 
track set, each new song pulling 
myself and the crowd into a 
deeper understanding of their 
gorgeous music — a vast, diverse 
hybridization of intimacy and 
raucousness. After frontman 
Andy Hull started passionately 
screaming on the chorus of the 
fourth song “Shake It Out,” I 
was hooked.

Touring in support of 2017’s 

atmospheric, 
moody 
release 

A Black Mile To The Surface, 
new material composed a little 

under half of their set. They 
sprinkled in crowd pleasers like 
“I’ve Got Friends” and “The 
River,” 
producing 
mirrored 

passion in a crowd that yelled 
every word back at the band 
— 
passion 
indicative 
of 
a 

typical emo and punk show. It 
dawned on me, suddenly, that 
Manchester Orchestra is an 
emo band, despite their indie 
associations.

It was on this basis, this 

foundation 
of 
talent, 
that 

Manchester Orchestra and their 
tour mates succeeded in moving 
an entire room of people (those 
smart enough to have ended 
up at the Fillmore, instead of 
the poor souls down the street 
watching 
America’s 
favorite 

panderer of mediocre folk pop, 
Ed Sheeran). By perfecting their 
loud-soft dynamic, Hull and 
company crashed wave after 
wave of emotion down on the 
crowd with the help of vocals 
ranging from tender croons to 
piercing yells, booming riffs 
and elegant piano melodies. The 
sheer versatility of the band’s 
musicianship is as incredible a 
spectacle to see as it is to hear. In 
the span of an hour, Manchester 
Orchestra turned me from a 
bastard hipster showing up for 
the lesser known openers into a 
rabid fan, an accomplishment as 
rare as a solar eclipse.

DOMINIC POLSINELLI

Daily Arts Writer

SONY MUSIC

Manchester Orchestra performed at the Filmore last Wednesday

CONCERT REVIEW
DAILY LITERATURE COLUMNIST

Laura Lee on the dispute 
over Oscar Wilde’s legacy

Talk with the author of a new book on Wilde & ghosts he left behind

Over a century after his 

death, Oscar Wilde is still a 
contentious character. Many 
are familiar with at least 
some snippets of his life story, 
if not the whole thing: his 
impassioned personality, his 
fame and success, his trial 
and imprisonment for gross 
indecency 
with 
men 
and 

his death only a few years 
afterward.

As if it weren’t enough 

for 
controversy 
to 
follow 

Wilde throughout his life, 
it continued even after his 
death. This took the form 
of a bitter conflict between 
Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred 
Douglas, 
and 
his 
literary 

executor, Robert Ross.

Laura 
Lee’s 
new 
book, 

“Oscar’s Ghost: The Battle for 
Oscar Wilde’s Legacy,” deals 
with this conflict and with the 
enormous fallout of Wilde’s 
death.

“It actually started when 

I got a Kindle for the first 
time,” Lee said. “I was looking 
for something to download 
that was free and I chose De 
Profundis, Oscar Wilde’s long 
essay that he wrote in prison 
in the form of a letter to Lord 
Alfred Douglas.”

This prompted Lee to start 

investigating 
more 
of 
the 

work that Wilde and Douglas 
had written about each other, 
which spurred her onward and 
opened up more questions.

“I found that everything 

that had been written was 
kind of arguing from the point 
of view of one of these guys or 
the other. And I wanted to see 
what the context was and be 
sympathetic to all of them, but 
figure out what I could about 

what the truth was,” Lee said.

That was six years ago. 

Now the book is complete, and 
Lee has gained a much fuller 
picture of what motivated 
both Douglas and Ross as they 
sparred in the years following 
Wilde’s death, battling over 
whether the death should be 
blamed on Wilde’s circle of 
friends and admirers or on 
Douglas alone.

“[Wilde] was an aggressive 

man, he inspired them both,” 
Lee said. “They were both 

quite a bit younger than him, 
and he talked about art and 
made them feel like they were 
part of a community, part of 
something that was forward-
looking and exciting instead 
of being on the margins. So 
I think that they were both 
very devoted to him, and they 
both felt, in different ways, 
responsible for parts of what 
had happened to him ... I think 
a lot of their feud was not 
wanting to be blamed for what 

happened.”

It was a complicated battle, 

in part because people are 
complicated 
and 
because 

it was hard to put Wilde’s 
decline in health in black 
and white terms. There is 
no question that Ross and 
Douglas both cared for Wilde, 
but it is interesting to note 
the ways in which Douglas 
has been increasingly blamed 
for Wilde’s misfortunes in 
the years following his death, 
in large part due to Ross’s 
writings.

“[Ross] really framed our 

dialogue about Oscar Wilde,” 
Lee said. “But interestingly, 
Lord Alfred Douglas, later in 
his life, even though he had 
no warm feelings for Robert 
Ross, he even said that that 
mythologizing of Oscar Wilde 
was a necessary first step to 
preserving his legacy.”

In the end, it seems that the 

point is less to declare a true 
and definite winner, and more 
to examine the interesting 
manifestations of this conflict.

“I 
don’t 
think 
there 

were 
winners 
and 
losers, 

necessarily,” Lee said. “I think 
that grand mythology about 
Oscar Wilde is part of what 
made him so intriguing, and 
such an enduring figure. So 
I’m sympathetic to both of the 
men in the battle, I understand 
both of their motivations. I 
try to see them as much as 
possible on their own terms, 
and with empathy.”

Lee’s book will be available 

for purchase in the United 
States starting on November 
1. She will speak at the Ann 
Arbor 
District 
Library 
on 

October 17 at 7:00 p.m.

LAURA 
DZUBAY

