By Ed Sessa
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/22/18
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
10/22/18
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Monday, October 22, 2018
ACROSS
1 Online auction
venue
5 Waffle House
competitors
10 Mine extracts
14 Wind-driven
device
15 Complete extent
16 City founded by
Pizarro
17 Simple __ of
kindness
18 Cause of
squinting
19 Sometimes-puffy
I’s?
20 English king
married six times
23 Circular coaster
feature
24 Guthrie at
Woodstock
25 Vietnamese
export
26 Vietnamese soup
28 Denials
30 Site for crafters
32 “Three cheers”
cry
36 Inventor’s spark
37 Prefix with -gram
38 Govt. workplace
monitor
42 How wealthy
people live
47 Arrived
48 One-man show
about Capote
49 Salt Lake City
athlete
50 Bay Area airport
letters
52 Gillette razor
55 Bluesman
Redding
57 Keep something
in mind
61 Christmastide
62 In first place
63 Perjurer
65 Bana of “Hulk”
66 Orange Bowl city
67 Sole
68 Perlman of
“Cheers”
69 Kenneth Lay’s
scandalized
company
70 Eye rudely
DOWN
1 Longoria of
“Desperate
Housewives”
2 One of music’s
Three Bs
3 Savanna
springer
4 Simple question
type
5 Singer known as
the “Godfather of
Punk”
6 Put the kibosh on
7 Nebraska city
8 Less tainted
9 Pittsburgh
footballer
10 Cassini of
fashion
11 Southpaw’s
opposite
12 Be a ham
13 Obama
daughter
21 Rice-A-__
22 Tiny bit
26 Honor society
letter
27 Got ready for the
surprise party
surprise
29 Deposed Iranian
despot
31 Clog or moc
33 Bad-joke
response
34 Tres menos dos
35 Speak wildly
39 Saying “Quiet!” to
40 Very popular
41 Get on in years
43 “__ the end of my
rope!”
44 Return from work
45 Enter steadily, as
a line of students
46 Rwandan native
47 “Border” dog
50 More lamb than
tiger
51 Club with 20-,
32-, 42- and
57-Across as
members?
53 Kidney enzyme
that regulates
blood pressure
54 Essential rose oil
56 Snow house
58 Prefix for “ten”
59 __ sapiens
60 Towering
64 Pastrami bread
MUSIC ALBUM REVIEW
Lorely Rodriguez makes music
that weaponizes awkwardness.
Her debut album under the alias
Empress Of, 2015’s Me, has a kind
of chaotic momentum to it, at once
a little messy and compellingly
energetic. It sounds both like the
majority of pop music and also
like nothing in particular. At her
best moments, she produces a
convincing synthesis, capitulating
neither to the undertow of dance
music or the voice-centeredness
of pop (see: “How Do You Do It”
and “Kitty Kat”).
Her lyrics are ambiguous and
occasionally bizarre, close rhymes
piling up on top of each other and
sentences left unfinished. Her
vocal delivery is delicate, and her
instrumentals
bristle,
crackle
and cut. Her first few projects are
comparable in style to FKA Twigs,
Björk and Grimes, although her
music is strongly individual and
she’s resisted comparisons to
Grimes, specifically stating, “You
can’t hear the lyrics in a lot of her
songs, but for me, when I mixed
this record I needed to hear every
word. The lyrics are my story and
I needed my story to be heard.”
Her new album, Us, released
three years after Me, clarifies and
updates her sound. In the time
between, she has collaborated
with Dev Hynes (aka Blood
Orange), Jerome Potter (half of
DJDS) and Khalid, and her style
shows a new maturity as well
as some stylistic traits of her
collaborators. The big-room EDM
is largely replaced with R&B-
inflected grooves, while keeping
the electropop scaffolding. “Trust
Me Baby” is a good example: It has
the mobile bassline and synths of
her earlier music while adding
808 drums and neater phrases.
Even when she does write a four-
on-the-floor groove (“Just The
Same” and “Love For Me”), the
beat has a newfound shuffle, with
none of the motoric quality of her
older work like “Water Water.”
Her sound design and mixing
similarly borrow from R&B in a
way that they haven’t before, and
the album benefits tremendously
for it. Her synths lose their
overwhelming quality, and her
talents as a songwriter and
vocalist
are
front-and-center.
A lot of what makes Me feel
messy is how much high-end
frequencies crowd out the vocals.
While Us generally solves this,
her abilities as a producer still
shine through — the airy energy
of “I Don’t Even Smoke Weed” or
the breathtaking space of “Again”
are recognizable to her style, as
are the meandering melodies
and sharp percussion that cover
the album. She alchemizes the
sometimes
unclear
energies
of Me into self-assured sultry
slow dances (“Trust Me Baby”)
and energetic electropop tracks
(“I’ve Got Love”), transmuting
the washed-out pastels into a
Californian
neon-and-sunset
glow.
It’s interesting that the two
tracks
in
which
Rodriguez
explores her insecurities in the
same way that she did in Me are
also the two tracks that resemble
the first album sonically. “All
For Nothing” and “When I’m
With Him” both have the sort of
stuttering melodies and repetitive
drums of her first album. These
are songs where there are lyrics
about feeling unsure (“I can’t help
but repress / all the signs / that tell
me I’m not fine,” “I feel like I’m
on the outside looking in / when
I’m with him” ). So much of her
first album was about struggling
to get somewhere, artistically
and
otherwise
—
“I’ve
been
living below the
standard / with
a
hunger
that
fuels the fire”
from “Standard”
is
emblematic.
Us seems to show
a
newfound
confidence
that
suits
her
well, but songs
like
“All
For
Nothing”
make
a
connection
between
her
older
material
and
this
newfound
ambition.
She ties the
album
together
with the closing
track “Again.” It
seems to respond
to her anxieties:
“I know it’s not
always
perfect
/ if I had the
chance I’d do it
all again.” A song
is
the
perfect
vehicle
for
a
statement
that
can otherwise be
a platitude, and
in the context
of the album, it
builds a bridge
between
the
anxious
energy
of Me and her
newfound
confidence.
The embrace of
imperfection
is
not a new theme,
but when done
by an artist like
Rodriguez
who
has
shown
so
much of herself,
the listener feels
the full weight
of
lines
that
would be cliché
elsewhere.
Catch me in my element:
Empress Of stuns on ‘Us’
EMILY YANG
For the Daily
TERRIBLE RECORDS
Us
Empress Of
Terrible Records
Lorely
Rodriguez
makes music
that weaponizes
awkwardness
WORLD MUSIC COLUMN
Every once in a while, among
the hordes of wannabe Mac
Demarcos and uninspired Tame
Impala clones, a gem pops up
on Bandcamp. One recent such
gem called Crumbling comes
from South Korea. An album
by the group Mid-Air Thief, it
seems to have received literally
no promotion until it suddenly
gained traction on internet fora
such
as
RateYourMusic.
No
interviews with the group exist,
and the Bandcamp page features
little else other than a thank you
message in Korean. However, the
album itself is a breath of fresh
air and one of the strongest, most
unique releases of 2018.
Despite its lo-fi aesthetic, the
album is actually impeccably
produced. For the most part, it is
rather straightforward indie folk
or pop, but its best moments come
from the points it transitions into
more psychedelic territory. The
opening track “Why” is the best
example of this. It begins with a
minute of your standard acoustic
strumming and breathy vocals
before
entering
a
powerful
chorus backed up by a variety of
synthesizers. The track quickly
deconstructs,
spending
the
following three minutes with
synth glitches crossing back and
forth between both channels,
eventually accompanied by the
lead singer’s wordless vocals and
an irregular drum pattern.
The second track, “These
Chains,” is the album’s strongest.
It
constantly
experiments
with its own core melody,
eschewing traditional structure
and also using different ranges
to
heighten
the
effects
of
the
psychedelic
flourishes.
Moreover, unlike most lackluster
examples of psychedelic rock,
the psychedelic moments are
not there for the sake of existing,
but rather to complement and
enhance
the
main
melody
extremely well.
Influences from all over pop
up in this album; from Animal
Collective to Cocteau Twins
to Real Estate and Grizzly
Bear. Crumbling manages to
synthesize
these
influences
into a whole that is even more
layered and intricate. Even after
multiple listens, there are little
details
to
notice,
especially
during the breakdowns such
as the second half of the track
“Curve and Light.” Its brightest
moments remind me closely of
Real Estate’s Days, which also
contains several moments where
the band “locks in” and creates a
rare moment of bliss.
Crumbling is the quintessential
fall album in all aspects, with
even the album art contributing
to the necessity to listen to it on
a cloudy day at the beach or a
misty morning. It is creatively
produced and an increasingly
rare example of psychedelia with
actual pop sensibilities done
right.
Mid-Air Thief accrues
an online following
SAYAN GHOSH
Daily World Music Columnist
FILM REVIEW
It’s
spooky
season
and,
normally, I like to steer clear
of any Halloween movie that
isn’t from Disney Channel.
“Apostle,” however, wrecked
that so thoroughly detailed
strategy of mine, with its
creepy and increasingly gory
depiction of life in a religious
cult on a remote island which
some
random
white
man
named
Thomas
Richardson
(Dan
Stevens,
“Downton
Abbey”) infiltrates in order to
save his sister.
The movie begins with a
gorgeous, wide view of the
Welsh countryside and a very
Harry
Potter-esque
train
peacefully ambling towards
the camera. Inside, however,
Thomas
is
anything
but
peaceful as he gets closer and
closer to the home of the cult.
Upon arrival to the island,
there are various wide-set
shots of lush nature, lulling the
audience into a false sense of
security only to jar them back
to reality with a shaky close-up
of Thomas’s bloodshot eyes.
On the surface, “Apostle”
reads like any movie focused
on a religious cult would. It’s
set in a society built on the lies
of Prophet Malcolm (Michael
Sheen, “Passengers”), a power-
hungry, albeit faithful, leader
and his equally greedy partner
Quinn (Mark Lewis Jones,
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi”).
The two apparently spread
the message that “she” sends
and, rather than worshipping
God or Malcolm, the people
apparently worship an island
goddess.
This
goddess,
however, is not just some
made-up higher being. About
30 minutes into the movie,
the audience learns that she
is an actual, physical woman
that
Malcolm
and
Quinn
had
trapped
years
earlier
when they discovered that
feeding her blood resulted in
successful crops. The issue
they face now, though, is that
she is apparently poisoning the
land, making it impossible for
the community to survive and
the real reason Thomas has
come to the island.
As one would also expect,
sexual
tension
is
rampant
throughout the movie. Thomas
and
Prophet
Malcolm’s
daughter,
unsurprisingly,
have a few moments but the
real emotional turmoil comes
from the teenage relationship
of Ffion (Kristine Froseth,
“Sierra Burgess is a Loser”) and
Jeremy (Bill Milner, “X-Men:
First Class”) that flowered in
spite of, or maybe because of,
the natural religious distaste
of anything sexual occurring
out of wedlock. This subplot
was arguably the best part of
the movie, and the saddest, as
our star-crossed lovers had to
deal with the consequences
of an unplanned pregnancy.
Inevitably,
the
two
were
murdered by none other than
Quinn, Ffion’s insane father.
The sad part is you really
knew that Jeremy and Ffion
loved each other. Even worse,
Jeremy and Thomas developed
a brotherly relationship. So
not only did we have to watch
two young lovers die, but we
also had to watch Thomas lose
one of his only friends on that
island. There was really no one
else on the island like them
and, when they died, I lost
any hope I had for any kind of
happy ending.
“Apostle” is predictable in its
exploration of a cult and, when
Netflix tries to combat this
with the island goddess twist,
the movie becomes just another
scary Halloween movie instead
of a psychological religious
thriller. The one thing that kept
nagging at me throughout the
whole movie, though, is how
similar “Apostle” was to the
recent kid’s movie “Smallfoot.”
Both were forays into societies
built on propaganda and their
subsequent demise, yet one had
catchy songs and didn’t give
me nightmares. “Apostle” also
had a very similar premise to
Disney’s “Moana” in that both
islands are being poisoned by
an angered goddess who just
wants her life back. “Apostle,”
then, is simply a creepier, more
British, and less entertaining
version of two very good kid’s
movies.
‘Apostle’ is a predictable
exploration of cult life
EMMA CHANG
Daily Arts Writer
NETFLIX
“Apostle”
Netflix
‘Apostle’ is
predictable in its
exploration of a
cult and, when
Netflix tries
to combat this
with the island
goddess twist, the
movie becomes
just another
scary Halloween
movie instead of
a psychological
religious thriller
5A — Monday, October 22, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com