MUSIC REVIEW

When I stumbled on All Are 

Saved in early 2015, approaching 
my high school graduation, I was 
certain I didn’t think I would be 
writing this review almost four 
years later. My graduation from 
university is now more imminent 
than is comfortable. I remember 
vacationing in Folly Beach, S.C. 
during spring break, the same 

week that Carrie & Lowell was 
released to the world at large. I 
was just beginning to find music 
for myself, exploring Stereogum, 
Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound 
and NPR and digesting every 
word as gospel.

One morning during that week 

of vacation, I was seeking out new 
music on Pitchfork and found 
it: Fred Thomas’s All Are Saved, 
with a clean little “8.0” next to 

the album cover. I had recently 
paid my enrollment deposit to 
the University, and a line in the 
first paragraph of the review read 
“Fred Thomas is always standing 
right behind you at a basement 
show in Ann Arbor.” Some quick 
research revealed that Thomas 
had been a mainstay of the 
southeast Mich. scene for over 
20 years by then — 25 by now. 
Although I had only been to town 
a couple of times then, I was more 
than prepared to make Thomas’s 
music mine, something literally 
close to home that I could latch 
onto.

All Are Saved was Thomas’s 

ninth solo album, but the first to 
receive any real critical attention. 
Changer, a more guitar-driven 
effort with hints of power-pop, 
arrived in early 2017, falling 

into a neat narrative surrounding 
Thomas’s life: He had gotten 
married, quit his job and moved 
to Montreal where his wife would 
be getting her graduate degree. 
Now, Aftering has been pitched 
as the end of an informal trilogy, 
in part nonspecific reflections 
penned from abroad — Thomas 
watching from the outside as his 
home country elected Trump 
— and in part hyper-personal 
anecdote.

The best way to think about 

the concept of Aftering is as a 
long walk off a short pier. Or a 
dead sprint straight off the edge 
of a cliff, followed by a careful 
narration 
of 
the 
seemingly 

endless fall. The first five songs on 
the album, especially “Hopeless 
Ocean Drinker,” “Good Times 
Are Gone Again” and “Altar,” are 
pure melody, catchy guitar and 
keyboard hooks under Thomas’s 
sometimes 
endearingly 
off-

key vocals. The album opener, 
“Ridiculous 
Landscapes,” 

features 
the 
Montreal-based 

Common Holly and Detroit-
based Anna Burch, whose music 
Thomas forwarded directly to 

Polyvinyl, earning her a contract. 
Both will be joining Thomas for a 
fall tour.

Following the rush of “Altar,” 

things 
go 
downhill 
quickly 

— imagine the rug pulled out 
from under your feet, only to 
reveal that there was no floor 
beneath it. “House Show, Late 
December” is the embodiment 
of that immediate anxiety, the 
plunge into the lake waiting at the 
end of the pier. It’s a steamroller 
that builds and builds as Thomas 
just talks at you, only a hint of 
sing-song in his voice. Thomas’s 
nostalgic 
musings 
removed, 

the song could easily pass as 
something by Explosions in the 
Sky. The last three songs follow 
suit. If “House Show” is the 
plunge, the rest of the album is 
the realization of how damn cold 

that water is, how slow things 
move, the tragedy of youth and 
memory and growing up. It’s half-

conscious confusion and sharp 
self-awareness in equal measure, 

all over fuzzed out electronics, 
keyboard 
and 
carefully 

orchestrated strings. 

When I interviewed Thomas 

earlier this year, I asked him if he 
could name a number of artists or 
albums that have influenced or 
continue to influence his writing. 
He responded saying that, though 
it may sound pretentious, his 
inspirations are largely just his 
experiences 
(though 
he 
has 

uploaded a playlist to Spotify 
titled “Aftering Mood Board”) 
and it’s evident that this is more or 
less true. “Alcohol Poisoning” and 
“House Show, Late December” 
function in concert as reflections 
on the difficulties of touring and 
the anxiety that accompanies 
being a local artist who is trying 
to get by on their art alone, spoken 
from the mouth of the ultimate 

lifer. Meanwhile, “What The 
Sermon Said” dives deep 
into Thomas’s childhood. He 
recalls the child miscreant 
he was, and how he couldn’t 
make friends his own age, 
and how his family never 
went back to that church.

“Mother, 
Daughter, 

Pharmaprix” 
includes 
an 

anecdote about a mother and 
daughter arguing in French: 
the daughter who “simply 
hates her / With that blinding 
burning meanness only teens 
get / Like she has to / Like her 
mom did to her mom / Like 
we all do,” and the mother 
who “loves her so much that 
she’s constantly terrified.” 
Thomas’s storytelling here 
is at its best: He takes a 
simple interaction and teases 
something 
like 
objective 

truth out of it. He can’t 
speak the language but he 
understands the subtext all 
too well; we weren’t there, 
but we can see it in ourselves. 
This, it seems, is Thomas’s 
ultimate goal, and one he 
approaches with an alarming 
urgency: to find solidarity, 
connection and empathy in 
the days when good times are 
gone again.

The conclusion of Fred 
Thomas’s trilogy is an 
anxious ice bath

SEAN LANG

Daily Arts Writer

Aftering

Fred Thomas 

Polyvinyl 

The 
#MeToo 
movement, 

revealing and cathartic as it has 
been, has also felt profoundly 
disorienting. There’s little that 
hasn’t been dredged up and laid 
bare on a mental dissection table 
for study. Who are these people 
we thought we knew? What 
should we make of experiences 
we hadn’t made anything of 
before? And as consumers of 
pop culture, what role have we 
played in it all? How badly have 
our own concepts of love and 
boundaries been warped and 

corrupted?

“You,” a thrilling new series 

from Lifetime, is a remarkably 
sharp attempt to grapple with 
those questions. It begins in 
an Upper East Side bookstore, 
where 
Joe 
(Penn 
Badgley, 

“Gossip Girl”), the manager, 
encounters Beck (Elizabeth Lail, 
“Once Upon a Time”) a doe-eyed 
MFA student in search of some 
Paula Fox essays. It’s the meet-
cute that launched a thousand 
romances — they gossip about 
the other customers, lapse into 
playful banter and trade reading 
recommendations.

But it doesn’t take long inside 

Joe’s inner monologue for us 
to realize that our sensitive 

bookstore owner is in fact r/
TheRedPill 
personified, 
a 

deeply insecure creep with a 
toxic savior complex that deems 
Beck a damsel worthy of his 
rescue. It might be a touch on 
the nose that Beck’s given name 
is Guinevere.

Oh, 
how 
quickly 
one 

fleeting 
interaction 
turns 

into a dangerous obsession. 
Joe has soon pored through 
Beck’s 
social 
media, 
found 

her 
apartment, 
studied 
her 

relationships and learned her 
routines, 
all 
while 
making 

grand, improbable conclusions 
about the sort of person she 
must be: “Every account is set to 
public — you want to be seen.” 
Most frightening is the ease 
with which he’s able to convince 
himself that everything he’s 
doing is just fine. Hiding in 
Beck’s shower, after her early 
return cuts his apartment break-
in short, Joe laughs the whole 
thing off in a voice-over. “I’ve 
seen enough romantic comedies 
to know that guys like me are 
always getting in jams like this.”

It’s a smart indictment of our 

culture — the Western canon 
has always reassured the Joes 
of the world that nice guys 
win in the end. In one telling 
scene, he brings home a copy of 
“Don Quixote” for his forlorn 
kid neighbor. “It’s about a guy 
who believes in chivalry, so he 
decides to become an old-school 
knight,” Joe tells him. Um, 
aren’t you forgetting something, 
Joe? The Man of La Mancha was 
delusional.

“You” is sometimes weakened 

by its tendency toward the 

absurd — let’s just say there’s a 
giant plexiglass book repair cell 
in the basement of Joe’s store 
that may or may not function as 
a makeshift torture chamber. 
But in other moments, “You” 
is buoyed by its disinterest in 
being tethered to reality or 
subtlety. It’s what keeps the 
show exciting and gives it the 
freedom to wander around New 
York, poking fun of Brooklynite 
caricatures, 
like 
Beck’s 

insufferable ex-boyfriend Benji 
(Lou Taylor Pucci, “The Story of 
Luke”), whose line of artisanal 
soda is, in his words, “legit, 
period.”

And for all the fun “You” is, it 

manages to stay terrifying and 
familiar. In the wake of #MeToo, 
some men have lamented that 
they’re being forced to reassess 
their every move and gesture 
lest they be misinterpreted. 
It’s ironic, because, as “You” 
illustrates, that’s exactly the 
sort of mental calculus women 
have to perform all the time. 
When Beck pays for her book 
with a credit card, Joe decides it 
must be a deliberate invitation: 
“You have enough cash to cover 
this, but you want me to know 
your name.” There is nothing 
quite like the terror of moving 
through the world constantly 
wondering whether the quiet 
guy at the bookstore might 
really be a deranged chauvinist.

If “You” stays smart and 

probing, it could function as a 
thoughtful look at romance in 
the digital age. At the very least, 
the pilot offers a few pointers 
upfront: Keep your blinds closed 
and your Instagram private.

Lifetime’s ‘You’ skewers 
the romantic comedy

MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN

Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

LIFETIME

“You”

Lifetime

Series premiere

Sundays at 10 p.m.

POLYVINYL RECORDS

FILM REVIEW

In what more closely resembles 

a melodramatic mystery than 
reality, Tim Wardle’s (“One Killer 
Punch”) shocking documentary 
breaks conventions in style and 
tone to tell a true story that 
can only be described as jaw-

dropping. 
“Three 
Identical 

Strangers” tells the story of 
identical triplets, Robert Shafran, 
Edward 
Galland 
and 
David 

Kellman, 
separated 
at 
birth 

and placed into three different 
homes. Their reunion led them 
to become global sensations, 
appearing on TV shows and 
even checking out Madonna in 
“Desperately Seeking Susan.” 
The three brothers even opened 
a restaurant together in New 
York 
City, 
not 
surprisingly 

dubbed “Triplets.” What seems 
like a happily-ever-after type 
of tale twists itself into a dark 
nightmarish saga of deception, 
experimentation and loss as the 
nature of the triplets’ adoption 
becomes more clear.

The documentary combines 

home videos with talking heads 
footage 
alongside 
tastefully 

shadowed re-enactments. The 
re-enactments are not forced; 
rather, they create a narrative 
as twisted as the reality the 
triplets faced. In a way, the 
re-enactments make the story 
feel more fictional, played by 
curly-headed lookalikes of the 
triplets clad in striped polos 
and flared jeans. The triplets’ 
first-hand 
accounts 
of 
their 

story emphasize the reality of it, 
reminding the viewer that the 
film before them is unfortunately 
not fiction at all. Sooner rather 
than later, the viewer might 
notice the absence of one-third 
of the triplets. While Shafran 
and Kellman have a lot to say 
in their interviews, Galland is 
mysteriously not present. As the 
film progresses, the viewer will 
come to understand the dark 
nature of Galland’s absence.

The film slowly unravels the 

mystery of the triplets’ separation 
keeping the viewer engrossed 
until the very last minute. What 
is uncovered is the fact that the 
triplets were separated for the 
purpose of scientific study. A 
psychiatrist by the name of Peter 
B. Neubauer, an Austrian Jew 
who escaped Nazi occupation, 
led dozens of these “twin-
studies” that separated twins and 
triplets into different families 
based on economic status and 
parenting style to discover the 
real difference between nature 
and nurture. Children adopted 

through the Louise Wise Agency 
with help from the Jewish Board 
of Family and Children’s Services 
were used for these experiments, 
unbeknownst to the adopted 
parents or the children.

For years, the triplets were 

not privy to files that detailed 
the purpose of their separation; 
in fact, the adoption agency 
that handled their case and so 
many other twin separations 
have sealed the files until the 
year 
2066. 
However, 
since 

the film’s release and other 
twin discoveries, some of the 
information regarding the study 
has been released to individuals 
who were adopted from the 
Louise Wise Agency. Still, there 
are dozens of people out there 
who have no idea that they have a 
twin. Wardle’s film has inspired 
many to investigate their pasts 
and has even led to reunions 
of siblings that had no idea the 
other existed.

The 
most 
unsettling 
part 

of 
the 
film 
is 
the 
human 

experimentation that took place 
without knowledge or consent. 
Even more troubling is the Jewish 
adoption agency and the Jewish 
researcher that re-created these 
Mengele-esque experiments on 
Jews in a post-Holocaust United 
States. Many draw an ethical 
comparison between Neubauer’s 
twin experiments to those of the 
Nazi regime, making the irony 
devastatingly clear.

‘Three Identical Strangers’

BECKY PORTMAN

Senior Arts Editor

“Three Identical 

Strangers”

NEON

Aftering has 

been pitched 

as the end of 

an informal 

trilogy, in part 

nonspecific 

reflections 

penned from 

abroad

6A — Monday, September 17, 2018
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com