The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tuesday, October 10, 2017 — 5
Arts

BBC

‘I Tell a Fly’ is innovatively 
avant-garde, intersectional

Benjamin 
Clementine 
is 

nowhere close to done innovating. 
On I Tell a Fly, we see the Mercury 
Prize winner experiment more 
than on his 2015 
debut, connecting 
disparate 
influences 
from 

Baroque era music 
all the way up to 
modern pop art. 
That being said, 
it’s hard to classify 
what I Tell a Fly 
really is. Bridging 
so many styles and influences, 
the atmosphere shifts from the 
operatic to the African tribal 
down to meditative soliloquy.

While Clementine is at heart a 

piano singer-songwriter, on his 
most recent album, harpsichord 
emerges dominant. But it comes 
with some cognitive dissonance, 
though, because the last time most 
people have heard its metallic 
twang was high school music 
class. And that’s only the start, 
because Clementine spends the 
whole 45 minute album blending 
this 
extreme 
with 
modern 

sounds and spacy progressions. 
On “Better Sorry than Safe,” the 
sound of a dying Ms. Pac-Man 
is mixed between the Baroque 
instrument.

What remains unchanged is his 

uncanny ability to both explode 
out of nowhere and seamlessly 
distill high-intensity moments 
into subdued piano interludes. 
Take “Phantom of Aleppoville,” 
the 
album’s 
fourth 
track. 

Clementine desperately yearns, 
“Oh leave me / Oh leave me / Leave 
me” between possessive, tribal 
hisses, right before fracturing the 

track into piano, hummed vocals 
and white space.

And 
these 
transitions 
are 

not occurring over the stretch 
of the album, but rather over 
single tracks. In effect, the 
album feels closer to a delicately 
arranged series of movements 
than anything else. Here, we see 
Clementine better reflect classical 
song 
structure 
than 
modern 

composition. Even 
still, accessibility is 
not lost.

As a whole, the 

album 
stretches 

upward. He opens 
“Paris Cor Blimey” 
with the ominous 
“Pandemonium, 
whoa 
/ 

Pandemonium 
/ 

Whoa.” The music is momentous, 
almost 
apocalyptic. 
The 

harpsichord spells doom.

Between the stretches of pure 

instrumentals, Clementine shifts 
sporadically between vocal styles. 
Varying pitch, tone and warmth, 
among other things, Benjamin 
Clementine’s delivery is as unique 
as ever. Just when one expects a 
forceful staccato, he rounds out 
his vowels and stretches them into 
the next line.

At 
points, 
his 
lyrics 
are 

almost incomprehensible, half-
murmured, half crooned. Similar 
to Young Thug’s innovation, he 
takes advantage of these moments 
and finds those internal melodies 
that 
traditional 
song 
would 

obfuscate. In these moments, his 
voice is closer to an instrument 
than it is a medium for language. 
Yet, what is so intriguing in these 
moments is how pushes into 
exciting, unexplored spaces while 
still rooting himself in classical 
traditions.

I Tell a Fly is also intriguing 

from 
a 
technical 
standpoint. 

The soundstage is continually 
manipulated, 
vocals 
and 

instruments alternating between 
center stage and fading into the 
back. Through it all, Clementine’s 
vocals harmonize with either 
his own or with backing singers. 
Generating that same quasi-gospel 
effect that D’Angelo pioneered, the 
album feels massive. Especially in 
those moments where Clementine 
absolutely belts it, I Tell a Fly is 
remarkable. 

“Phantom 
of 
Aleppoville” 

is the most hip-hop influenced 
section of the album, the Spanish 
influenced strings could be easily 
mistaken for a Miseducation of 
Lauryn Hill B-Side. Meanwhile, 
“One Awkward Fish” is the most 
Drum & Bass / Garage influenced 
track on the album. The dampened 
kick / snare feels straight out the 
club. The groovy bassline makes 
contact with early Jungle. Yet, like 
the rest of this album, the track’s 
foundation is stripped down and 
meshed into something larger: in 
this case, echoing, choir music.

Now, when we speak of a 

musician 
having 
“range” 
we 

usually associate to singers who 
can traverse six octaves or multi-
instrumentalist’s with equipment 
taped to every inch of their bodies. 
Yet, what Clementine shows us in 
his “range” is his manipulation 
of auditory space. Just as easily 
as I Tell a Fly explodes and 
oversaturates into the gargantuan, 
it crystallizes into the minimal.

Which is ultimately I Tell a 

Fly’s strength. Here, Benjamin 
Clementine 
simultaneously 

extends across so many discourses 
that it’s hard to trace his influences 
and 
aspirations. 
Avant-garde 

has long been about borrowing 
from the past and reinterpreting 
it to as a response to the present. 
Between the swaths of chamber 
pop to Baroque sonatas to U.K. 
dance, Clementine continues his 
emergence as one of the defining 
singer-songwriters in the U.K. 
right now.

It’s seems like a modern social 

standard to make jokes and jabs 
at vegetarians and vegans. As a 
vegetarian of almost two years, 
and now a vegan of two months, 
I’ve heard enough commentary 
from outsiders to write a whole 
book about it. But to be honest, 
many of them are funny or 
interesting or insightful, so I 
just roll with the punches.

Society 
is 
constantly 

mocking this diet for a plethora 
of reasons — one is the stigma 
that all vegans are bougie-ass, 
arrogant, “Save the animals!” 
activists that will spend a 
whopping six bucks on some 
organic celery stick. Another is 
that the U.S. has a heavy meat 
and dairy industry, and if you’re 
not eating some sort of animal 
product daily, you’re doing 
something wrong.

Some beg the idea that 

vegan diets don’t provide the 
same nutrients that animal-
based products do (which is 
both true and false, though 
mostly 
circumstantial). 
And 

as an athlete, I’ve loved the 

“Well, how do you get protein?” 
question. Oh of course! How 
could I forget? Because the only 
protein source comes from a 
cow or a chicken!

My point here isn’t to give 

comebacks for all the jabs and 
questions. I could throw facts 
or statistics out there, but that 
is why we have the internet and 
food documentaries. Instead, I 
want to reflect on my journey 
of becoming a vegan and how 
my body and mind has so far 
reacted to this lifestyle.

It was January 2016. I was a 

pretty toxic freshman by eating 
crappy foods, picking at my 
acne and partying on weekends. 
I felt nasty, both internally 
and externally, and I knew I 
needed a change. Luckily my 
best friend, Emma, had been 
a vegetarian for a few months 
at the time, and of course, she 
convinced me to do it too.

But it wasn’t as easy as 

“Emma’s a vegetarian, so now 
I will be one too!” I come from 
the Philly area, which is known 
to be meat-heavy area: hoagies, 
cheesesteaks, 
pork 
roll, 

scrapple, etc. I’m also deeply 
involved with my heritage, and 
Ukrainian and Hungarian foods 
are loaded with meat and dairy 
products. Vegetarianism, and of 
course veganism, was not easy 
for me to do.

Nonetheless, after those first 

two weeks of not eating meat, I 

shockingly didn’t miss it at all. 
The taste and the texture of it 
all, it already felt so foreign to 
me. Cheese was still my best 
friend though, and even now 
as a vegan, it is something I do 
miss once in awhile (especially 
when my housemates make a 
bunch of grilled cheese or order 
Domino’s pizza).

Flash 
forward 
to 
June 

of this year. I hadn’t eaten 
meat for eighteen months, I 
had lost weight, both from 
vegetarianism and a lack of 
weight training, and overall, I 
was feeling pretty great. I was 
exercising regularly and filling 
up on as much tofu as possible. 
But there was still something 
about myself that I still wasn’t 
super content with: my skin, my 
constant tiredness, my lack of 
drive.

I visited Emma this summer, 

and she made us a delicious 
vegan 
dinner 
of 
baked 

cauliflower, salad and vegan 
chicken. I was so surprised 
at how easy that meal was to 
cook, and even better, how the 
meal turned out to be delicious. 
It was at this moment when I 
realized if I could eat delicious 
meals like this one, then there 
is no doubt in my mind that I 
could be a vegan.

So I started cutting down 

on cheese, milk and eggs. I ate 
one vegan meal a day, which 

usually consisted of a big bowl 
of black beans, edamame, tofu, 
chickpeas, peas and quinoa. 
Those once-a-day meals turned 
into two and then three. I 
began buying vegan cheese and 
meat to use in my cooking, and 
although it tastes different, it’s 
a taste I am acquiring quickly. 
Regardless of the flavors and 
the specificity of the diet, my 
body and my brain have never 
been better.

Now I feel fuller on just 

two meals, and I eat more 
vegetables 
and 
fruits 
than 

I ever have before. My skin 
cleared up drastically within 
the first month, and I cut down 
on caffeine because I realized 
I didn’t need it — without 
lethargy, I now wake up ready 
to take on the day.

In a way, I simply feel lighter 

— in fact, I feel happier. Maybe 
that’s due to outside factors like 
friends and good classes, but 
regardless, I don’t feel weighed 
down like I used to when I ate 
dairy or meat. I look forward to 
every meal I make, seeing what 

I can add to my diet to make 
it balanced. I’ve opened up to 
new foods that I wouldn’t eat 
in the past (hello, tomatoes and 
kale). And overall, this whole 
experience has given me a sense 
of sureness.

Having a vegan diet has truly 

changed me for the better. 
Beyond the great impact it 
has made to me physically 
and mentally, it’s made me 
a 
more 
committed 
person. 

There is power in committing 
to transforming your body, 
in saying no to foods that are 
wrong for your body and for the 
environment, and in allotting 
time to cook new meals. I 
love seeing what my body and 
brain are capable of doing, and 
veganism has shown me how 
healthy and clean I can be.

It’s time to

 talk veganism

HEALTH & WELLNESS COLUMN

ERIKA 

SHEVCHEK

MUSIC REVIEW

I Tell a Fly

Benjamin 
Clementine

Behind Records/

Virgin

AARURAN

 CHANDRASEKHAR

Daily Arts Writer

PUBLIC SQUARE FILMS

‘Martha P. Johnson’ takes 
on one too many stories

FILM REVIEW

The 
Saint 
of 
Christopher 

Street left this world with as 
much of a bang as she entered it. 
LGBT rights advocate Marsha 
P. Johnson died in 1992, yet 
her death — which was ruled 
a suicide — is still 
open and contested. 
David 
France’s 

(“How to Survive 
the 
Plague”) 

documentary 
gathers stories and 
archive footage of 
Marsha 
and 
her 

friends 
to 
shed 

some light on the 
Stonewall veteran’s 
mysterious 
death. 

“The 
Death 
and 

Life 
of 
Marsha 

P. Johnson” tells the untold 
stories of Johnson, Rivera and 
Nettles. While the film serves 
up a stunning portrait of several 
pioneers for gay and transgender 
rights, it gets confused whether 
it is a cold case crime doc 

or a study of a marginalized 
community who fought for their 
rights.

The 
majority 
of 
the 

documentary follows Victoria 
Cruz, an LGBT rights activist, 
transgender woman and friend 
of Johnson. Cruz tracks down 
many of the cops on Johnson’s 
case to get some answers, of 
which she receives few. For 

the most part, 
Johnson’s 
case 

is 
left 
cold. 

One 
redeeming 

quality 
of 

Cruz’s 
search 

for 
the 
truth 

is 
the 
archive 

footage 
of 

legendary trans-
rights 
activist 

Sylvia 
Rivera, 

Johnson’s friend 
and 
fellow 

Stonewall 

veteran. 
Rivera 
went 
from 

homeless to founding member 
of the Gay Liberation Front, 
an 
outspoken 
activist 
for 

transgender 
rights. 
Without 

Rivera, the documentary would 
be another true crime doc left 

cold, but she deserves more than 
a supporting role — she deserves 
a film of her own.

In addition to Johnson’s case, 

Rivera’s life and Cruz’s quest for 
justice, another story is added 
to the mix, the recent murder 

trial of transgender woman Islan 
Nettles. While the film’s title is 
credited to Marsha P. Johnson, it 
is scattered and busy with telling 

too many stories. Much like 
Rivera, Nettles and even Johnson 
deserve more of a film than they 
got. Yet, the documentary does 
its job in telling the stories that 
need to be told, an admirable and 
difficult task.

Mainstreaming the history 

of the marginalized is no small 
feat, and hopefully through 
France’s documentary activists 
and pioneers alike will get the 
respect and credit they deserve. 
Documentaries have been telling 
stories of the downtrodden for 
ages, the question is whether 
Hollywood can step up to the 
plate. In a post “Moonlight” 
world, 
can 
Hollywood 
tell 

the 
histories 
of 
the 
LGBT 

community 
along 
with 
the 

fictionalized? Past attempts have 
proven to be either tone deaf 
(2015’s “Stonewall”) or masterful 
(2008’s “Milk”).

Perhaps 
France’s 

documentary is better viewed as 
activism than anything else, and 
in that capacity it succeeds with 
flying colors. Filmmakers should 
take note of the difference 
between film as entertainment 
and film as activism; while 
the former leaves audiences 
satisfied, the latter doesn’t. “The 
Death and Life of Marsha P. 
Johnson” is activism incarnate, 
liberating the stories of pioneers 
in the LGBT rights movement 
for the world to be inspired by. 

BECKY PORTMAN

Daily Arts Writer

“The Death 
and Life of 
Marsha P. 
Johnson” 

Streaming on 

Netflix

Public Square Films

The Saint of 
Christopher 
Street left this 
world with as 

much of a bang as 

she entered it

Filmmakers 

should take note 
of the difference 
between film as 
entertainment 

and film as 

activism

Society is 
constantly 

mocking this diet 
for a plethora of 

reasons

It’s seems like a 
modern social 

standard to make 
jokes and jabs at 
vegetarians and 

vegans

