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Thursday, May 10, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
‘Tully’ is fresh
Caitlyn Smith discusses
her music career, album
FILM REVIEW
“This album
was the end of
a long, winding
road.”
MUSIC INTERVIEW
When the next big thing is in
front of you, you sit up and take
notice. That’s the effect Cait-
lyn Smith has on a room: She
demands your undivided atten-
tion. While she may not be a
household name yet, her show at
The Blind Pig on May 3 had the
distinct feel of a rising star — the
kind of grungy, small-venue per-
formance you brag about having
seen a year later when the artist is
all over the radio.
Smith is already the biggest
name you’ve never heard in the
music industry. Her origin story
fits neatly into the mythology of
the all-American country singer:
Raised in a small town in Min-
nesota, Smith started performing
in the Twin Cities before mov-
ing to Nashville, where she built
a career as a songwriter. Some
of her songs were picked up by
major recording artists, including
Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton
(“You Can’t Make Old Friends”),
Rascal Flatts (“Let it Hurt”), Lady
Antebellum (“747”), James Bay
(“Hear Your Heart”) and Meghan
Trainor and John Legend (“Like
I’m Gonna Lose You”). Smith
struggled to establish herself as a
performer in her own right until
Starfire, her breakout release this
January from Monument Records
for which she is currently touring.
“This album was the end of a
long, winding road. I went around
to every label in Nashville and
tried writing for radio and tried
writing what I thought other peo-
ple wanted from me. Finally, after
years of hearing ‘no’ from record
labels and ‘no’ from most of Nash-
ville, that’s what brought me to
creating Starfire,” said Smith in a
phone interview with the Michi-
gan Daily. “I stepped back and I
thought, you know what, I can
write songs that are my story and
not think about genre, not think
about radio, not think about any-
thing except making music that I
love.”
The tracks on Starfire tend
toward
confessional,
drawing
from Smith’s Minnesota roots
and the hustle of trying to make a
name for herself in Nashville. For
Smith, the freedom to be more
vulnerable and personal in her
songwriting was an important
reason for the shift towards per-
forming her own songs: “When
you go in the room to write for an
artist or for a specific project, it’s
a little bit more like work. You’re
able to dig around in what the art-
ist is thinking, but not necessar-
ily tell your story. You can play a
character in a room, but it’s not
as personal. When I’m writing
for myself I’m digging around my
own heart and my own story and
my own truth and trying to write
that.”
The intimacy of these songs is
always evocative and occasion-
ally heartbreakingly raw like in
“This Town Is Killing Me,” a song
about Smith’s struggles in Nash-
ville with the lyrics, “Nashville,
you win / Your steel guitars and
broken hearts have done me in /
I gave you my soul / I wanted it
so bad and now I just wanna go
home / This town is killing me,
this town is killing me.”
Smith covers a lot of ground in
Starfire, both in terms of emotion-
al range and genre. As much as
she can access vulnerability and
grief, Smith is also able to pump
out brighter, brassier tracks like
“Contact High” and “Before You
Call Me Baby” that wouldn’t be
out of place on the Top 40 charts.
While the album holds a country
backbone, Smith includes pop-
inflected hooks and elements of
blues and rock, making her style
difficult to pigeonhole.
Despite this variety, Smith’s
songs show off her meticulously
honed instinct for songwriting
— unsurprising, since she consid-
ers herself “a student of songs”
and cites singer-songwriters like
Carole King, Paul Simon and
Patty Griffin as some of her big-
gest influences. Smith identifies a
common thread in her work: “All
the songs have some guts! Even
on the more fun songs, I still feel
it from my toes.” With Smith’s
powerhouse vocals and take-no-
prisoners confidence, it’s easy to
see how gutsiness could be her
calling card.
After finishing the Starfire
tour, Smith will go on the road
with country legends Faith Hill
and Tim McGraw, and then with
Sheryl Crow. She says, “2018 is
about getting this music out to
the fans. And then anytime I’m
in Nashville and have a few days
off I’ll definitely be writing and
making some new stuff up for the
next record.” Whatever that next
record may be, there’s no denying
that Caitlyn Smith is on the rise,
and she’s taking all of us along for
the ride.
JULIA MOSS
Daily Arts Writer
What does modern motherhood
look like? The spectrum of cinematic
depictions of what it means to be a
mother is seemingly endless, ranging
from lighthearted, surface-level por-
trayals of mothers in “Freaky Friday”
and “Mean Girls” to far darker depic-
tions of mothers acting ‘un-motherly’
in “Carrie” and “Ordinary People.”
Despite the variation in genre, what
all these films have in common is that
their portrayals of moth-
erhood are over-exag-
gerated and unrealistic.
When it comes to inter-
preting
motherhood,
the film world turns to
using a phony lens rather than show-
ing the grittier and occasionally less-
pleasant truth of the stresses and
anxieties that mothers actually expe-
rience. Void of unnecessary fluff and
over-dramatization, Jason Reitman’s
film “Tully” offers audiences a fresh
and sobering glimpse into the rarely
revealed side of modern-day mother-
hood and its overshadowed intersec-
tion with mental health, challenging
the unfair standards that expect con-
stant stability and overall perfection
from mothers.
Marlo (Charlize Theron, “Mad
Max: Fury Road”), a mother of
two elementary-aged kids and a
newborn baby, is far beyond her
breaking point. Life has become
a merry-go-round, but instead of
spinning around and around among
colorful animals and smiling faces,
Marlo is rotating through the same
numbing routine that mainly consists
of changing diapers, breastfeeding
and prepping microwave dinners. In
a state of perpetual sleeplessness and
with minimal aid from her loving
yet ridiculously unhelpful husband
Drew, (Ron Livingston, “The Con-
juring”) Marlo is running on empty,
heading toward a downward mental
spiral. However, a beacon of light
shines down when, eager to revive
his sister’s spirits, Marlo’s wealthy
brother Craig (Mark Duplass, “Safety
Not Guaranteed”) offers an unusual
baby-shower gift: a night nurse.
Desperate for a sliver of R&R,
Marlo takes her brother up on his
offer, quickly finding herself face-to-
face with the youthful, enviable and
illustrious Tully (Mackenzie Davis,
“Blade Runner 2049”). Despite
Tully’s initial purpose of simply car-
ing for the baby through the night,
her late-night house calls gradu-
ally evolve into gossip-filled eve-
nings with Marlo. As the friendship
between the two women grows, their
bizarre, almost sister-like chemistry
strengthens and, invigorated by Tul-
ly’s free-spirit and zest, Marlo slowly
emerges from her state of emotional
blankness and depression.
Through her character’s feelings
of self-doubt, numbness and inner
and outer exhaustion, Theron bril-
liantly delivers the powerful message
that motherhood is multifaceted.
While, in part, it is unconditional
love, joy and relentless devotion, it
can also lead to a loss of
identity and emotional
deterioration.
Mar-
lo’s unsweetened and
uncensored moments as
a mother create the tone
of realness that persists throughout
the movie.
Arguably
most
commendable
about “Tully” is its boldness in tack-
ling the theme of mental health,
a topic seldom explored in adult
characters. Throughout the film, as
audience members, it is clear that
Marlo is experiencing some form of
postpartum depression and severe,
debilitating insomnia. Yet, the other
characters in the film, Marlo’s hus-
band included, are oblivious to her
struggles. This oblivion speaks more
broadly to the manner in which, until
fairly recently, mental health, espe-
cially postpartum depression, was
often unacknowledged as legitimate
or relevant by society. Still today
there exists a skewed and ancient
notion that mental health can be
boxed up and designated to fit a spe-
cific type of person, which simply is
not true. Through the presentation
of Marlo, a thirty-something mother
and a character that viewers would
not expect to be suffering from
depression, “Tully” overturns the
false assumptions that there is a mold
of any sort for what mental health
‘should’ look like.
More than anything else, “Tully”
is a film that aims to enlighten.
Reitman re-evaluates the notion of
motherhood from a more human-
istic perspective, tearing down the
implicit and outdated stereotypical
standards that expect expert child-
care, relentless positivity and endless
smiles from mothers. With Mother’s
Day fast approaching, “Tully” takes
an unconventional route, exposing
the reality of motherhood’s tribula-
tions, honoring all mothers by chal-
lenging the illusion of ‘the perfect
mother’ and beautifully shattering
the misconception that there is a way
that mothers are supposed to be.
SAMANTHA NELSON
Daily Arts Writer
“Tully”
Focus Features
State Theatre