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Tuesday, October 3, 2017 — 5
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Looking simultaneously
at new Four Tet and Cyrus
RCA/TEXT
ALBUM REVIEW
Gone are the days of Miley
Cyrus pole dancing in front
of thousands of screaming
pre-teens, or smoking salvia
from
a
large
bong at a house
party. Miley has,
apparently,
had
her near decade of
experimentation
and found herself
again, essentially
right back where
she
started,
living in a happy
rainbow land.
Younger
Now,
her latest, is a
country pop album that lacks
clear chronology. To call it
timeless would be a mistake,
as that indicates a more lasting
appeal, but Miley does float in
some odd, newfound balance
between
past
and
present
on this project. If she hadn’t
been pulled through the TMZ
ringer back in 2009 for her
very typical teenage behavior,
this could easily have been her
third album — not her sixth.
That the road back to her
roots has been so long does
come
with
rewards.
The
sappy, sometimes plain, never
too
deep
songwriting
has
an earned quality to it, now
considering her past tumult. On
lead single “Malibu,” she sings,
“I never would’ve believed you
if three years ago you told me
/ I’d be here writing this song”
and she sounds genuine, with
distant pain in her voice. It’s
hard to deny the sweetness of
this sentiment. Unless you’re
a tabloid writer or a Twitter
stan, we don’t generally wish
for the emotional downfall of a
distant pop star we don’t know.
There’s a lot of real joy in
hearing that she’s happy with
who she is now.
The problem, though, is that
there is a piece missing on this
timeline, and it is hard to accept
that we’ve arrived at this
cute, content and inoffensive
country pop album without
practically any reference to
the era from Can’t Be Tamed
to Miley Cyrus and Her Dead
Petz. In many ways, that era of
Miley is the one which we’re
most familiar with now, and
this pivot will strike many as
confusing,
especially
since
it goes largely unprocessed
on this release.
There
are
no
serious cathartic
tracks
about
her
past,
no
explanations for
her
behavior.
Instead,
we’re
meant to simply
accept that this
is, yet again, the
new Miley.
It’s
this
missing
piece
that makes Younger Now, while
occasionally enjoyable, largely
a disappointment. When the
feverish background vocals on
“Malibu” really come through
on the second chorus, you
want to grab that Miley by the
shoulders, pull her out from
behind the curtain and beg her
to scream louder. It’s like she’s
hiding behind a well-groomed
version of herself who needs
you to know that she’s fine,
and what that strangles is the
satisfaction some prior tracks
had, like “Wrecking Ball” and
“Lighter.”
There are a few moments of
fun here. The title track can
be played a few times over and
still be enjoyed, and “Inspired”
is
nice
enough,
almost
actually inspiring. There’s an
endearing Dolly Parton feature
that’s mostly notable for the
voicemail from Parton, where
she talks about recording on
a cassette and using a flip
phone. The rest tends to bleed
together.
Which
brings
me
to
another Friday release that
also suffers from a bit of
blandness. Four Tet’s newest
album,
New
Energy,
is
a
not nearly the whiplash of
Miley Cyrus’s genre switch,
but
it
does
include
some
boundary pushing beyond his
discography, as Kieran Hebden
is want to do.
He keeps to his trademark
here, mixing very natural,
life-like sounds on top of a
subtle club beat that is always
controlled and never explodes.
He uses an Eastern-inspired
harp noise on this release,
and it remains a constant
throughout,
applied
most
intriguingly on “Lush” and
“Two Thousand Seventeen.”
The former bounces back and
forth in simple trance, while
the latter moves languidly
between the Eastern harp and
soft, moody synths. Hebden has
a skill for changing the scene
up just when you thought the
sound would get redundant. It’s
what made Rounds and There
Is Love In You so powerful and
interesting.
He employs that on this
release too, but lets some of the
duller moments go on for longer
than they should. “Daughter”
sags at the start, as does “You
Are Loved,” and though the
payoffs are praiseworthy, the
build-up can be exhausting.
He would have done well
taking a few more cues from
his impressive remixes, like his
recent of The xx’s “A Violent
Noise.”
He’s
particularly
successful when he draws you
in just far enough, hinting at
a climax that never exactly
comes.
That
might
sound
frustrating, but by the end
you’re itching to start the song
over to experience that journey
again. Four Tet’s project above
all is about the process, so
it’s not surprising that there
are slower moments on his
releases. When it works, you’re
left with an infectious inner
rhythm that suggests a dance,
but one in solely in your head.
This is achieved on the album’s
single,
“Scientists,”
which
combines voice, drum patterns
and the organic harp in a
growing chorus that almost
reaches a Gregorian chant at
its peak.
So as with most Four Tet
albums, New Energy can be
overlong and taxing, but it
manages, at points, to continue
the project that Hebden has
been working on for nearly two
decades.
MATT GALLATIN
Daily Music Editor
Younger Now
Miley Cyrus
RCA
—
New Energy
Four Tet
Text
Form follows function in
indie-romance ‘Columbus’
SUNDANCE
FILM REVIEW
At the center of “Columbus” is
a bank designed by Eero Saarinen.
It’s the first truly modernist
bank,
a
simple
unimposing
glass building. Built in a time
— Casey (Haley
Lu
Richardson
“Split”) tells us —
when banks were
fortresses where
tellers sat behind
bars.
Then
Saarinen
came
to
Columbus and rewrote the rules
for what a bank, and really what
a building, should be. “Columbus”
takes it’s name from the same
sleepy Indiana town that boasts
Mike
Pence’s
birthplace
and
a concentration of modernist
architecture. And like Saarinen’s
bank, the film breaks from the
conventions of modern indie films
— simplifies, elevates and opens
them up.
After his estranged arcitect
father ends up in the hospital
during a business trip, Jin (John
Cho “Star Trek Beyond”), a
translator living in Seoul, travels
to Columbus. He meets Casey,
who shares his father’s love of
architecture, and lets her take
him around the city showing him
the buildings she loves. The result
is a lot like a Linklater film —
quiet and simple with meticulous
visual composition. It’s a walk and
talk movie where the characters
just happen to be talking about
modernist architecture.
A stunning debut feature from
Kogonada, “Columbus” owes a
great deal of it’s staying power
to it’s cinematographer Elisha
Christian (“In Your Eyes”) who
composes shots with precision
and nuance. The camera lingers in
quiet long takes that
are balanced and
beautiful. Buildings
and
nature
are
given equal screen
time and we are
asked to look at both through the
admiring eyes of the two leads.
Through their eyes — and through
Christian’s — banks and hospitals
become things of immense beauty.
Most movies have at least one
shot that floors me. “Columbus”
is a movie made entirely of those
kinds of shots.
Richardson
and
Cho’s
chemistry isn’t initially apparent.
Their first interaction — smoking
cigarettes on either side of a fence
— is odd. They make bad jokes and
have to explain them, but both
actors have the subtlety to infuse
their slow, and often awkward,
courtship with charm.
Richardson especially proves
herself to be at the top of her
class. She is an absolute dream as
Casey, giving the kind of nuanced
and
vulnerable
performances
most actors only find in their late
careers.
“Columbus” is a romance and
yet it’s not entirely clear who is
falling in love with whom. There’s
the obvious couple, Jin and Casey,
but there’s also Jin’s unresolved
feelings for Eleanor and Casey’s
flirtation with Gabriel. Ultimately
it seems the real love story, the
most compelling romance, is that
between people and buildings.
It’s a romance in the sense
that it’s a movie about love and
the ways in which people share
what they love. It’s a movie about
a girl who loves a bank and tries
to tell a man why she loves it. But,
of course, it’s impossible to put
something like that into words.
“Columbus” is as unexpected
as it’s namesake. A secret stash of
beauty in a genre — quiet indies
— that often prioritize quirk
and cleverness over aesthetic
composition. Like the buildings it
depicts, “Columbus” cares equally
about form and function.
MADELEINE GAUDIN
Senior Arts Editor
“Columbus”
Sundance Institute
Michigan Theater
ALBUM REVIEW
Young Thug harkens to
his classic sound on latest
By
the
time
I
started
writing this review, Young
Thug had just been arrested
for possession of marijuana
and
tinted
windows.
This
development is unfortunate
but also equally Young Thug,
not in terms of illegality,
but
in
nonconformity
to
societal strictures. Strictures,
including within his music —
bars, some form of rhythm,
the
essentials
—
aren’t
something
with
which
he
concerns
himself.
In
this
sense, the rapper is different,
not “normal”; we know this.
He knows we know this, but
he says things like “Everybody
got tigers / So I’m gon’ go get
a liger” so we know he knows
that we know this. If you
create your own canon of rap
experimentalism, as he has,
this is just something you do.
If
you’re
Thug,
most
recently, you make a ballad-
heavy
album
(Beautiful
Thugger Girls) with the most
croony guitar the genre has
seen since Jay-Z ironically
brought one out to mock Noel
Gallagher at Glastonbury in
2008.
While the guitar gets left
behind
on
Young
Martha,
Thug’s latest — a collaboration
with Carnage — stays weird,
because it’s just something
Thug does. This form of weird
begins with the grandiose on
“Homie”; Meek Mill trades
punches between passionate
Thug hooks (“I got a bottle of
Ace and I popped it and I don’t
even pour it up”) that reinforce
the type of energy we’ve come
to expect from him.
This EP is more Jeffery —
a trap landmark thanks to
its defiance of convention —
than Beautiful Thugger Girls,
employing more traditionally
thumping
production
and
leaving out the more tender
exclamations we heard from
Thug on the latter.
“Liger,”
for
example,
is
confidently Thug, as he shows
quirkiness
and
pomposity,
the closest thing to normal
being Carnage’s synth cuts.
The track feels primed for a
mainstream splash.
That a rapper can make
such a splash after making
strong
statements
ranging
from the political to the,
well,
inescapably
political,
is an impressive reflection
of his influence within the
industry. And, while his status
as a catalyst for previously
ambiguous rap territory has
been given a ton of attention
at this point, it doesn’t make
his quintessential self any less
entertaining.
“10,000
Slimes”
sees
Young Thug at this most
quintessential self, with quips
(“her booty ja-jiggly, wiggly”)
that we would never hear
from Drake, or J. Cole, or
anyone of that vanilla variety,
and it makes it all the more
fun.
The
highlight
might
be “Don’t Call Me,” which
features multi-instrumentalist
production
infused
with
an
explicit
pop
sensibility
before
unheard
from
the
rapper. Here Carnage’s touch
shines, allowing enough room
for a chopped Shakka hook
that pulls the song together
as
something
definitively
un-Thug. In his world of
undefined
boundaries,
we
welcome the dancehall.
Young Martha isn’t really
“new,” but if that sounds
disappointing, it shouldn’t. If
it’s not a marked progression
in his development, it is, at the
very least, a fun diversion, four
tracks that layer effectively
but still masquerade as cogs in
this typical Thug fun machine.
Enjoy Young Martha for now
— he’ll probably “twist it like
a tootsie roll,” or something of
that sort, again, very soon.
JOEY SCHUMAN
Daily Arts Writer
‘Columbus’ takes
it’s name from
the same sleepy
Indiana town
that boasts Mike
Pence’s birthplace