The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, February 23, 2018 — 5
Aaron Maine, the frontman and
creative genius behind Porches, is
a man who definitely knows how
to move his hips. With each groovy
pop hit (whether he was donning
a guitar or not), more often than
not Maine would be swaying with
each syncopated beat. Entrancing
and enticing, Maine captivates
a crowd with little more than
his rhythmic movements and a
tempting stare.
However, the show at Detroit’s
El Club didn’t start out with such
a commanding presence. It took
Maine and the rest of the band a
few songs to really warm up to the
rather rudely outspoken crowd,
but once in their element, their
craft was pure magic. By the third
song, Porches’s foray into trance-
pop “Find Me,” Maine’s persona
was magnetic.
Opening his set with the first
track on Pool, “Underwater,” and
the celestial synthline expertly
set the tone for the rest of night.
Porches’s cohesive brand of deep
bass and floaty synths rarely
strayed far from these dancey
beats, placing emphasis on each
clearly delivered syllable from
Maine’s aching, monotone drawl.
Despite touring in support of his
recently released third album
The House, the set included a
surprising number of cuts from his
sophomore album Pool, including
“Mood,” “Braid” and “Glow,”
inciting enthusiastic responses
from the majority of the packed
crowd.
Most surprisingly was the band’s
stripped down version of normally
upbeat The House opener “Leave
the House,” featuring a slowed
tempo, minimal instrumentals
and harmonic accompaniment
underneath Maine’s verses. Yet,
even the more produced tracks
on the album like “Find Me” and
“Anymore” had a more organic
feel to their live performance,
sometimes
featuring
Maine
playing a piercing cowbell. Every
guitar note vibrated a little more
clearly in conjunction with the
sound live drums brought to the
forefront, contrasting their more
toned down presence during the
final mixing of most of Porches’s
music. It felt like an entirely new
experience hearing live versions
of such highly produced and
meticulously mixed tracks.
The encore left much to be
wondered after the band first
left the stage, having already
played most of their hits during
their regular set like “Car” and
“Find Me.” Maine first came out
with one of their keyboardists to
give a beautiful rendition of the
minimalistic “Country,” before
the rest of the band came out
to perform shocking deep cut
“Headsgiving” from their first
album Slow Dance in the Cosmos,
rounding out the set with a
throwback to their indie rock
roots.
Aaron Maine is probably very
aware of his charisma; it radiates
off him with an addictive quality
— his confidence intoxicating,
like a blinding sun we allow him
to burn into our retinas. Leaving
El Club on Tuesday night, that
image of Maine irradiated and
backlit on stage was stamped into
my memories. Their music left
me wanting more — not for lack
of quality or fulfillment but rather
out of pure addiction for the well-
oiled machine that is Porches.
“Goodbye” (which Maine noted
to be his favorite song from The
House), with its poppy beats and
tender piano melodies, sums up
the show well: “It is so sad to say
‘goodbye.’”
Porches put on a hypnotic
show in Detroit’s El Club
DOMINIC POLSINELLI
Senior Arts Editor
Courtesy of Dominic Polsinelli
MUSIC ALBUM REVIEW
I come from a thoroughly
bookish family. Our relationships
have always been mediated by the
writers and stories we’ve handed
over to each other like little pieces
of ourselves, and sometimes I
think that the most enduringly
true things I know about these
people whose lives are so tangled
with mine are the books they’ve
loved. As the youngest, I got
everyone else’s literary hand-
me-downs. When I was little, my
brothers gave me “Harry Potter”
and “Percy Jackson,” stories that
gave us a common language and
fantasy worlds we could live in
together.
When I was a teenager, my dad
gave me “Pride and Prejudice,”
and when I read it I saw the things
he loved about it: The sublime
order of a world with such pristine
rules and manners, and, within
that order, the chaotic hope of
love. When I decided I wanted to
be a writer myself, my mom gave
me the writers I still consider my
holy trinity: Alice Hoffman, Anne
Tyler and Marisa de los Santos,
whose stories give my world
richness and texture. My mom is
also the one who gave me “The
Williamsburg Novels” by Elswyth
Thane, our family heirloom.
I was maybe 14 at the time:
cripplingly insecure, wild and
determined to be misunderstood.
My mom and I fought more than
anything else, and I was convinced
as only a teenager can be, without
evidence or logic, that the world
was ending before it had even
begun. But when my mom gave
me “Dawn’s Early Light,” the first
in Thane’s series of seven novels,
something shifted. The book was
yellowed and falling apart at the
seams, published in 1943 and long
since out of print. It was written
by a friend of my maternal great-
grandmother, and passed down
from my grandmother to my mom
to me.
The
story
was
instantly
addictive, a mix of history,
romance and adventure. The
series follows each generation of
two families, the Spragues and
the Days, from the American
Revolution
all
the
way
up
until World War II, which was
happening as the books were
being written. They aren’t perfect
by any means; even at 14, I was
old enough to know that the pre-
civil rights, pre-feminist portrait
of the American South they
offered was revisionistic at best
and blatantly offensive at worst.
But I was hooked, and I couldn’t
be unhooked. The characters
felt real to me, and in a way
mythological, archetypes for the
people I wanted to be and wanted
to be with. The men were dashing,
chivalrous, passionate; the women
were precocious, brave and had
moxie coming out of their ears.
At 14, there was nothing I wanted
in the world more than moxie.
There’s nothing I want more now.
Just
as
the
books
drew
generational
lines
through
American history, they helped me
find the thread between myself
and the women who had come
before me. I could picture Thane
giving the books to my great-
grandmother, a woman who was
vivacious, popular and college-
educated long before education for
women was the norm. At the same
time, she was also cold and sharp-
edged, and probably wouldn’t
have chosen motherhood if she
had lived in an era that gave her
that choice. I could picture the
books moving through the hands
of my grandmother, whose life
was as marked by adventure
and tragedy as any of the book’s
characters, who I remember as
unfailingly lovely.
More than anything, I could
picture my mom reading the
books at my age. She looks like
me at 14, but brighter, prettier.
She is as uncertain as me, and as
lonely, and as hopeful. An only-
child raised by a single mom,
she dreams her way into this
fiction of a big, devoted family of
siblings and cousins, uncles and
aunts, white Christmases. I like
to think that when she met my
dad a few years later, my mom
saw in him the grand romance
that she saw in the men of those
books.
At 14, “The Williamsburg
Novels” gave me a way to see
my mom as more than the tense
stranger she sometimes seemed.
They gave me a way to see in her a
shadow of myself, to see the ways
we were both echoes of what had
come before us. When she gave
me those books, she gave me a
piece of herself, a mythology that
we and our grandmothers and
our great-grandmothers could
all live inside together. Someday,
I hope I have a daughter. When I
give her these books, I hope that
she sees in them all the women
who love her.
The more things change, the
more things stay the same. As
spring teases that it may be just
around the corner here in Ann
Arbor, out in the nation, the various
great institutions of classical music
have been, one by one, making their
2018–2019 seasons known — and
while one type of season may look
like it’ll soon be in bloom, another
is turning out to be distressingly
grey.
One metric I use when judging
a given organization’s concert
season tends to end up being the
amount of new music they include
in their program. Of course, this
is an element of my own bias
(I’m a composer, sue me), but I
also genuinely believe that it can
serve as a helpful barometer of an
institution’s artistic vibrancy. If
you aren’t programming any new
work, more often than not you
aren’t having any new ideas — and
at that point, why bother with it at
all?
But
a
subset
of
this
consideration, due to historical
factors, usually ends up being
the quantity of composers from
either
minority
or
otherwise
disadvantaged
backgrounds
(read: not European-descended
males).
As
it
unfortunately
seems to be necessary every
year, this discussion reemerged
a week ago, prompted this time
by the announcement of the
Metropolitan Opera’s 2018–2019
season, a depressing catalogue
of 27 operas that, improbably yet
unsurprisingly, includes a grand
total of zero women composers.
One of the most disheartening
things about the whole affair
is perhaps that, not only does
the season do a disservice to
the neglected composers, it also
does a disservice to the art-going
public. Setting aside the fact that
you should include a more diverse
range of artists because, say, it’s
the right thing to do, it’s also an
artistic imperative. You can only
gain so much by hearing Wagner’s
tetralogy for the 500th time. You’re
never going to expand the art form
by just rearranging the furniture
and hoping the light catches the
sofa in an interesting new way.
You have to reupholster the couch.
You have to buy a new one. Maybe
even hire an interior decorator,
if you’re feeling ambitious — but
do something. And it would be
almost
inconceivable
for
that
something to not include women
composers: After all, in the words
of The New Yorker’s Alex Ross,
“any serious consideration of the
music of our time would have to
include a large number of women.”
Even looking back at The Met’s
own recent history provides an
excellent example of an innovative
and boundary-pushing woman
composer — in 2016 the company
produced
Kaija
Saariaho’s
“L’amour de loin,” a stunning work
which I had the good fortune to
review at the time. Shortly after
the season which included the
Saariaho was announced, The New
York Times ran an article entitled
“Met to Stage Its First Opera by
a Woman Since 1903,” which, if
nothing else, should give a clue as
to how frustratingly rare this sort
of thing is.
Of course, one also has to take
into account the cultural moment.
I doubt it’s escaped anyone’s notice
that we’re in the middle of the
#MeToo phenomenon, and that’s
probably an element of why this
particular season announcement is
getting so much attention. Artistic
pillars have sometimes liked to
think of themselves as residing
somewhere outside the political
and social fray, but honestly, one
can’t really look at this season, in
this moment, without thinking
that it comes off as rather tone deaf,
especially given the fact that The
Met’s own James Levine recently
had his past catch up with him.
Granted, planning an opera season
is a lot of work and takes months
upon months to pull together, so
The Met can’t really be faulted
for the specific sin of lacking
timeliness. But the general trend is
certainly fair game.
The Met certainly isn’t alone in
this. If the organization regarded
as America’s opera company par
excellence got it about as wrong
as you can this year (a production
of
Nico
Muhly’s
new
opera
“Marnie” is its one saving grace),
it had company. Orchestras and
opera companies from Chicago to
Houston join it in its pitfall, failing
to program female composers
with a frequency matched only
by a similar failure with respect
to
composers
from
minority
backgrounds.
There are of course exceptions,
examples which could be used
as a template for a way forward.
One is fortunately in our own
neighborhood.
The
Detroit
Symphony
Orchestra
has
programmed a promising array
of new music, including much
by female composers. Detroit,
however, pales in comparison to
the undisputed leader of the large-
scale new music scene, the Los
Angeles Philharmonic.
A look at the City of Angels’
orchestra should be enough to
make any competitor blush with
embarrassment. There simply isn’t
comparison — L.A. is a veritable
cornucopia of new music. Last
year a no less notable member of
New York’s cultural commanding
heights than The Times turned
its coat to proclaim the L.A. Phil
“the most important orchestra
in America. Period.” High praise
from the paper of record, but
certainly not unwarranted. Over
the last 15 years or so the orchestra
has rocketed to new heights,
notably under the leadership of
a woman, Deborah Borda, who
was last year snagged by the New
York Philharmonic to be their
president and CEO, just as Ann
Arbor’s University Musical Society
snagged
the
Philharmonic’s
Matthew VanBesien. L.A. offers a
constructive and innovative model
for any forward-thinking musical
organization to emulate, an aim
which sooner or later, I suspect,
will end up being existential.
If music is to be — as its most
strident champions assert — the
universal language, it has to do
better with speaking in a universal
voice. You can’t seriously expect
the
umpteenth
symphony
of
the umpteenth dead Austrian to
necessarily speak to the soul of
someone whose ancestors were
put into chains by someone who
looked a lot like the old maestro.
To have a universal appeal it has to
draw from universal sources, and
that means programming works by
people who the canon left behind.
But more than that, if classical
music is to have a future — and I
assume that’s the idea — then it
indisputably has to lie in the hands
of the young, and the young aren’t
going to put up with this for much
longer. I’m not saying that the great
masterworks should be thrown
onto the ash heap of history, but if
organizations keep trying to reburn
the same classics without adding
more wood to the fire, an ash heap
is what they’ll get. Of course, no
amount of admonishment from the
sort of semi-professional opinion-
giver who writes columns in The
Michigan Daily is going to change
all of this. But an ocean is made of
individual drops, and, well, you
know the rest.
Of operas and ash heaps
DAILY CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMN
DAYTON
HARE
BOOKS THAT BUILT US
‘The Williamsburg Novels’
JULIA MOSS
Daily Arts Writer
CONCERT REVIEW
The story
was instantly
addictive, a mix of
history, romance
and adventure
It’s the year 1996, and everything
sucks. At least, that’s what Netflix’s
latest
coming-of-age
dramedy
is trying to prove. And with
unrequited high school crushes,
embarrassing parents and the
unmistakable angst of adolescence,
it’s doing a pretty convincing job.
Taking place in Boring, Oreg. —
a real-life town whose unfortunate
name is a heavy-handed motif in
the series — “Everything Sucks”
centers around the coming together
of the town high school’s AV and
drama clubs. The main characters,
at least in the premiere episode, are
Kate Messner (Peyton Kennedy,
“Odd Squad”) and Luke O’Neil
(Jahi Winston, “Proud Mary”), the
former a sophomore struggling
with both her sexuality and the
fact that her father is the principal,
the latter a baby-faced freshman
tasked with finding his way in a
new school.
They are a charming pair,
with an instant bond that is only
strengthened by the fact that
both are being raised by single
parents, which may hint at a future
romantic plotline. Yet even with
these fantastic young actors and a
relatable, if not overdone concept,
“Everything Sucks” fails to get off
to a fantastic start.
It’s certainly not the cast. Luke’s
two best friends Tyler (Quinn
Liebling “Halfway House”) and
McQuaid (Rio Mangini “Teen
Wolf”) are the typical combination
of the goofy and pessimistic
sidekicks that add a healthy level
of banter-humor to the show
straight from the start. Beyond
the freshman, drama club duo
Oliver (Elijah Stevenson, “Captain
Fantastic”) and Emaline (Sydney
Sweeney, “The Handmaid’s Tale”)
easily fall into the tropes of the too-
cool grunge guy and the blonde-
haired mean girl as soon as the
second episode. Each character
represents a different sort of
outsider in high school, and it will
no doubt be exciting to watch how
they each fit into and work off of
each other.
Yet, based off of the first episode,
you might not want to make it that
far. At first glance, “Everything
Sucks” doesn’t seem like anything
special. It absolutely could be, but
the pilot tries too hard to deploy the
’90s nostalgia that permeates every
scene. Luke receives an Oasis album
in the mail, Oliver has a meltdown
over his broken Kurt Cobain glasses
(see: clout goggles) and every girl
dons a distressed flannel over the
T-shirt of a band that stopped
making music at least seven years
ago. The second episode is even
named
after
a
“Wonderwall”
lyric, and the now-infamous Oasis
anthem makes an appearance in a
tender moment between Luke and
Kate.
As it did with the 80s-packed
references of “Stranger Things,”
Netflix wants to reach out to their
audience using a retired culture
that once was all they knew. But
you need more than a throwback
soundtrack
and
some
niche
references to create a solid show,
and “Everything Sucks” struggles
to get off to a good start.
That’s not to say that the show
is not worth a watch. Luckily,
it finds its footing immediately
after the pilot episode, as central
conflicts both between characters
and within them are introduced.
The
nostalgia-packed
episodes
capture the uncomfortable and
awkward institution that is high
school and sets it all to a mix of
Alanis Morissette and Nirvana.
“Everything
Sucks”
can
be
enjoyable, but you are just going to
have to keep watching to get to that
point. Until then, I’d recommend
kicking back with a No Doubt album
and some Burger King chicken
fries, because there are some things
only #90skids understand.
TV REVIEW
‘Everything Sucks’ brings
’90s nostalgia to Netflix
SAMANTHA DELLA FERRA
Daily Arts Writer
“Everything Sucks”
Netflix