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

