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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

