The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, March 5, 2018 — 5A

FOR RENT

2 & 4 Bedroom Apartments
$1400‑$2800 plus utilities.
Tenants pay electric to DTE
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3
w/ 24 hour notice required
1015 Packard
734‑996‑1991

5 & 6 Bedroom Apartments
1014 Vaughn
$3000 ‑ $3600 plus utilities
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3
w/ 24 hour notice required
734‑996‑1991

 ARBOR PROPERTIES 
Award‑Winning Rentals in 
Kerrytown 
Central Campus, Old West 
Side, Burns Park. Now Renting for 
2018. 
734‑649‑8637 | www.arborprops.com 

FALL 2018 HOUSES
# Beds Location Rent
 6 1016 S. Forest $4500
 4 827 Brookwood $3000
 4 852 Brookwood $3000
 4 1210 Cambridge $3000
Tenants pay all utilities.
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3 
w/ 24 hr notice required
734‑996‑1991

SUMMER EMPLOYMENT

WORK ON MACKINAC Island 
This Summer – Make lifelong 
friends. The Island House Hotel and 
Ryba’s Fudge Shops are seeking help 
in all areas: Front Desk, Bell Staff, 
Wait Staff, Sales Clerks, Kitchen, 
Baristas. Dorm Housing, bonus, and 
discounted meals.
(906) 847‑7196. 
www.theislandhouse.com

Classifieds

Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

ACROSS
1 The Bounty, e.g.
5 Remote control
targets
8 Landowner’s
document
12 Subtle glow
13 Spruce oneself up
15 Addresses with
forward slashes
16 *Kaput
19 *Life in a
breakfast bowl,
say
20 Move like a crab
23 Often-stubbed
digit
24 Black Russian
liquor
28 Nivea competitor
30 Invalidate, as a
law
31 Rapper __
Wayne
32 Disney’s title
lamp rubber
36 Sailor’s
agreement
37 Stage designs
39 Emulate flowers
on a hot day
40 Source of linen
41 “Dilbert” creator
Scott
43 “Little Women”
woman
44 Spongy cake
laced with rum
45 Scammer’s
targets
47 Step in a flight
49 West Coast state
51 Everglades
waders
54 Layer of eggs
55 Target practice
props
59 “__ you awake?”
60 Software test
version
62 “M*A*S*H” actor
Elliott
63 Body covering
64 Racetrack shape
65 Homer
Simpson’s wife
66 Four-legged
companions
67 Give a holler
68 In the future
69 Gratis

DOWN
1 Pathetic
2 Tint
3 Nest egg
acronym

4 Ping-Pong need
5 Piece of land
6 Instagram upload
7 Messy campfire
snack
8 Firestone
competitor
9 Pitching stat with
a decimal point
10 Inventor Whitney
11 Broadband
option, for short
13 Maj. for a future
shrink
14 “The 18-Down”
poet
17 Structure with
skyboxes
18 “Nevermore”
speaker
20 Dip for chips
21 Like the outfield
walls at Wrigley
Field
22 *Oral health care
network
25 Negotiations killer
... or, in a way,
what each
answer to a
starred clue is
26 Whitewater craft
27 Amazon Echo
Dot’s voice
service
29 Well-worn

30 Harshly criticize
33 Octopus’ eight
34 Deer mom
35 Dalmatians, e.g.
38 Far from self-
effacing
40 Inside the foul
line
42 Dalmatian
marking
44 Hefty supplies?
46 Hard puzzle
48 Watched over

49 “This could be a
problem”
50 Christopher of
“Superman”
52 Done to death
53 Sight or smell
56 First matchmaker?
57 Make better
58 Tiny pond growth
61 “__ in favor, say
’aye’”
63 Coppertone
letters

By C.C. Burnikel
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/05/18

03/05/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Monday, March 5, 2018

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

Soccer Mommy’s ‘Clean’ 
is great, simple indie rock

Covering herself in blood, 

dancing around her room in front 
of her dead boyfriend’s corpse, 
Soccer Mommy finds serenity. 
Or at least what appears serene. 
As she pours out red liquid 
from a coffee mug leaning over 
the edge of a rooftop, her face 
— bearing a nose ring, piercing 
hazel eyes and a stoic expression 
— is hard to read. Her mouth 
looks equally ready to break into 
a grimace or a smile. By killing 
her boyfriend, she’s released 
from the emotional abuse, no 
longer his dog to lick his feet, 
and she basks in this freedom. 
Freedom to defile him, play 
videogames and waltz alone. 

Finally, she has the space she 
wanted to breathe and the room 
he never gave her. But at the 
end of this macabre party, after 

dragging the deceased around 
for the three minutes of single 
“Your Dog,” Soccer Mommy 
rubs his arm tenderly, and looks 
a little sad. Her face still doesn’t 
betray her precise feelings, but 
in her fingers is longing.

Soccer Mommy cites punk and 

grunge as musical inspirations, 
and the influence shows in the 
“Your Dog” music video. The 
video for Nirvana’s “Heart-
Shaped Box” comes to mind 
when she draws a black cross on 
the dead boyfriend’s forehead, 
and lyrically the two songs 
tackle the same theme. They feel 
trapped in a bad relationship.

Bad relationships are the 

running concern on the DIY 
indie rocker’s effective debut 
album Clean. Over alternatively 
soft and subtly vicious chord 
progressions, she sings about 
unfollowed 
desires, 
self-

doubt and disappointment. On 
“Cool,” the grittiest she gets 
instrumentally, 
she 
wishes 

she could have the cold, casual 
aesthetic of the romanticized 
“cool-girl,” the kind of girl who 
will never love back and who 
will never care. The kind of girl 
the guy she wants would want.

That desire comes back again 

and again. It’s on “Last Girl,” a 
jumpy and upbeat track where 
she wishes she was her lover’s 
last girl. “I want to be like your 
last girl / ’Cause she’s got looks 
that drive you all down / Loved 
the way she wears her makeup,” 
she sings, thinking that things 
might go differently if only 
she was different, if only she 
was cool like the last girl. On 
“Scorpio Rising,” she watches as 
a guy she likes looks over a girl 
“bubbly and sweet like a Coca-
Cola.”

She’s not alone here. Soccer 

Mommy 
— 
the 
project 
of 

Nashville-based Sophie Allison 
— fits nicely alongside the 
talented class of female indie 
rockers who are leading the 
genre’s resurgence, artists like 
Mitksi, 
Julien 
Baker, 
Adult 

Mom, Ian Sweet and Phoebe 
Bridgers 
(whom 
Allison 
is 

currently on tour with). Women 
armed with stunning guitar 
riffs, catchy melodies in minor 
keys, a tint of grunge and, often, 
a biting malaise. Each of these 
artists have played with this idea 
of wanting different skin, often 
the skin they think their lovers 
want. Mitski considers shedding 
her ethnicity for a boy on “Your 
Best American Girl”; Julien 
Baker misses a former self on 
“Appointments.”

Soccer Mommy falls on the 

quieter end of this group, not as 
strapping as Mitski or as grand as 
Julien Baker. Her arrangements 
are sparse, almost always as 
simple as a stripped guitar and 
her clear, intimate vocals. Clean 
finds her experimenting with 
newer, heavier sounds while 
still honing her eye for the 
simplistic. Much of the album 
is built around the sound of 
breakthrough singles “Allison” 
and “Out Worn,” which gained 
traction 
on 
Bandcamp 
and 

through 
social 
media 
sites 

like Tumblr and Twitter. At 
times Clean can suffer from 
the apprehension that follows 
such a breakout, as if she never 
intended to make it in the first 
place and is still figuring out 
what kind of star she might want 
to be.

Mostly she avoids this though, 

and the best moments on Clean, 
like “Your Dog” and closer 
“Wildflowers,” suggest a more 
confident woman behind the 
guitar than we’ve heard from 
her before, and as her first foray 
into producing something as 
large as an album, she hits the 
mark not by attempting the high 
dive, but rather by perfecting her 
form in shallower water.

MATT GALLATIN

Daily Arts Writer

ALBUM REVIEW

FAT POSSUM RECORDS

Clean

Soccer Mommy

Fat Possum Records

Soccer Mommy 

— the project of 

Nashville-based 

Sophie Allison 

— fits nicely 

alongside the 

talented class 

of female indie 

rockers who are 

leading the genre’s 

resurgence

‘Seven Seconds’ is timely 
but is ultimately lacking

When it comes to developing 

a 
narrative 
that 
can 
be 

sustained over a season, the 
television crime drama has 
a few options: the classic 
whodunnit, 
the 
compelling 

whydunnit, 
the 
less 

conventional unto-whom-was-
it-done (see “How to Get Away 
with Murder” season 3) or even 
some “Big Little Lies”-esque 
combination of the three.

“Seven 
Seconds,” 
a 
new 

10-episode Netflix series from 
showrunner Veena Sud (“The 
Killing”), quickly lets us know 
it won’t be concerning itself 
with any of those questions; 
they’re all answered about 
three minutes into the first 
episode. In a rush to meet his 
pregnant wife at the hospital, 
off-duty Jersey City cop Pete 
Jablonski (Beau Knapp, “Sand 
Castle”) 
speeds 
through 

Liberty State Park and hits 
Brenton Butler, an African-

American 15-year-old riding 
his bike.

It’s 
not 
what 
it 
looks 

like. It was an accident. But 
Jablonski’s supervisor in the 
narcotics unit, Mike DiAngelo 
(David Lyons, “ER”), is quick 
to remind the rookie cop that 
to a fraught American public, 
everything is what it looks like. 
Jablonski is a white cop and 
Brenton a Black boy. “They’re 

gonna crucify you for this,” 
DiAngelo snarls. So Brenton 
Butler is left to die in the snow 
and a cover-up ensues.

Assistant District Attorney 

K.J. 
Harper 
(Clare 
Hope-

Ashitey, “Suspects”) and her 
partner Detective Fish Renaldi 
(Michael 
Mosley, 
“Sirens”) 

are tasked with investigating 
Brenton’s killing, a journey that 
leads them right back to the 
Jersey City Police Department. 

The fundamental question that 
propels “Seven Seconds,” then, 
is this: How deep is the moral 
rot of the institutions designed 
to govern and protect us? And 
is it possible to find even a 
semblance of justice in them? 
These aren’t particularly easy 
concepts 
to 
navigate, 
and 

at times, the show seems to 
crumble under their sheer 
weight.

Literally, 
yes, 
the 
hit-

and-run takes place in the 
middle of winter. But there’s 
also an excessive coldness 
and gloom to the writing 
and 
cinematography 
of 

“Seven Seconds” that make 
it exhausting to watch. The 
show is littered with lingering 
stone-faced 
stares 
and 

troubled characters haunted 
by vaguely-alluded-to pasts, 
as if to say, “Don’t forget, this 
show is prestige television!” 
K.J. 
is 
a 
self-destructive 

alcoholic, and Jablonski is 
perpetually frowning. When 
nearly 
every 
character 
is 

broken and dysfunctional for 
no reason, “Seven Seconds” 
becomes sluggish and devoid 
of feeling.

The exception that proves 

the rule is the fantastic Regina 
King 
(“American 
Crime”), 

who gives a rich, layered 
performance as Latrice Butler, 
a grieving, untethered mother 
whose faith has been shaken 
by the death of her son. The 
circumstances 
of 
Brenton’s 

death are admittedly different 
than those of Trayvon Martin 

or Tamir Rice, but Latrice’s 
suffering still feels real and 
resonant.

Given the extensive time 

the show also spends focused 
on Jablonski and his agony, 
it would be easy for “Seven 
Seconds” to veer into what we 
might call “Three Billboards” 
territory — where Black pain 
exists only as an accessory to 
a story of white redemption, 
and forgiveness is doled out 
to brutal, hateful people who 
haven’t necessarily earned it. 
But to her credit, Sud has a 
remarkably light directorial 
touch, and there’s never any 
sense that viewers should be 
feeling one way or another.

The other side of that coin 

is a story that’s often aimless 
and meandering — in desperate 
need of tighter editing and 
fewer 
subplots. 
“Seven 

Seconds” 
is 
occasionally 

rewarding, but much like the 
justice system itself, too slow-
moving and unfulfilling to 
pack a punch.

MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN

Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

NETFLIX

The show is 

littered with 

lingering stone-

faced stares 

and troubled 

characters 

haunted by 

vaguely-alluded-

to pasts, as if 

to say, “Don’t 

forget, this 

show is prestige 

television!” 

“Seven 
Seconds”

Netflix

When nearly 

every character 

is broken and 

dysfunctional for 

no reason, “Seven 

Seconds” becomes 

sluggish and 

devoid of feeling