“Dancing On My Own.” In 
the latter, Robyn watches an 
ex-lover from the corner, begs 
him to see her and ultimately 
dances with sorrow alone. It’s 
a 
crystalline 
encapsulation 

of 
bittersweet. 
When 
she 

wonders, “I’m right over here 
/ Why can’t you see me?” she’s 
asking a question, but it sounds 
like a demand; with that 
demand is the implicit belief 
that a better world might exist 
— that she might deserve the 
right to escape her loneliness. 
As she twirls around on the 
dance floor and looks up at the 
ceiling, she knows what she 
needs and thinks maybe she 
can get it. On “Honey,” Robyn 
learns that the fact of necessity 
has nothing to do with its 

fulfillment.

That’s 
a 
profoundly 
sad 

realization, and it’s easy to 
underestimate the minimal, 
early-morning-hours-in-the-
club production of these songs. 
Robyn says she’s no longer 
an optimist, not like she once 
was. “Things don’t always go 
well, that’s just how it is,” she 
told Pitchfork. What replaces 
optimism is an acceptance 
of love as a viscous fluid, 
something that slips through 
the fingers and falls onto the 
floor with ease, glittering up at 
you from the ground. You can 
still enjoy it, but it’s fleeting.

Robyn is the pop star of 

ambivalence, and the sadness 
comes 
with 
its 
counter. 

“Missing U,” a song about 
loss, sounds like a triumph 
with its carnival synthesizers. 
“Because It’s in the Music” 
is a track to happy-cry to. 
The counter melody makes it 
sound as if it’s moving in two 
different directions, mirroring 
the back and forth of the lyrics 
when she sings, “It’s a tired old 
record / I still play it anyway / 
Because it’s in the music.” On 
“Ever Again,” she describes 
the push and pull of a new 
relationship while declaring 
that she’s never going to be 
broken-hearted again. It closes 
out with the most joyous 
production of the entire album.

And it’s a triumph, too, when 

you consider her newfound 
realization in context. After 
eight years of battling pain 
and loss at the fault of love, 
she doesn’t say that she’ll 
never love again — she says 
she’ll never “hurt” again. She’s 
still taking licks of the sugary 
stuff while she can. She’s just 
dropped 
the 
expectations 

she once had. Gone are the 
questions of “why” that dogged 
her on the Body Talk series and 
her eponymous album. This 
time around, Robyn knows.

Also gone is most of what 

could 
pass 
as 
mainstream 

pop. Opener “Missing U” and 
the title track are as close as 
she gets to pure pop, and even 
these 
sound 
anachronistic 

— not necessarily of the past 
or the future, but of some 
ethereal medium which draws 
from both. There’s ’80s house 
music, ’90s R&B and the 
futuristic synths of “Send to 
Robin 
Immediately.” 
What 

brings it all together is the 
obsession with entrancement. 
To achieve it, Robyn avoids 
simple 
choruses 
and 
the 

predictable drops of EDM. The 
beats wander unexpectedly. 
You have to wait and see 
where they take you, and the 
moments of transcendence are 
almost always a surprise. In 
“Send to Robin Immediately,” 
a discernable beat pattern 
doesn’t emerge until more than 
halfway through the song. The 
tropical “Beach2k20” is in 
no hurry, strolling along for 
six minutes, with pauses for 
swim breaks. Honey rewards 
patience.

Perhaps, 
though, 
the 

greatest achievement of this 
album is that it exists at all, 
and still sounds so essentially 
Robyn. No one else could 
have made this album, and 
despite her reboot, despite the 
trauma, despite the eight-year 
hiatus, with her newfound 
realizations, new software and 
an added calm, the absolute 
joy is that Robyn is — after 
everything — still dancing on 
her own.

When Robyn describes the 

eight-year hiatus she took from 
her solo career, she says that 
she spent the time “rebooting.”

“I 
really 
feel 
like 
I 

rearranged my insides in a 
way,” she told The New York 
Times. Her hard drive was 
wiped clean to make way for an 
entirely new program. Honey 
is our introduction to the new 
software. What we meet is an 
album about resolve, about 
sticking your tongue out to 
taste the sweetness and closing 
your eyes with satisfaction 
because you know not to 

ask for too much more. The 
momentary bliss is enough. 

On the astonishing title 

track (the existence of which 
had been rumored for years), 
Robyn opens in an ascending 

voice, “Baby you’re not gonna 
get what you need / But baby 
I have what you want / come 
get your honey.” A version of 
the song was previewed on 
an episode of HBO’s “Girls” 

in 2017, but was far from 
complete. Robyn reportedly 
spent four years trying to finish 
it, and it became, she says, 
her white whale. The result 
sounds accordingly deserved. 
“Honey” glimmers like liquid 
metal on the dance floor; 
it pulses and churns with a 
wistful determination, the sort 
of contradiction that Robyn is 
so skillful at capturing. Pop 
tastemaker Jack Antonoff, in 
praising her song “Dancing On 
My Own,” describes Robyn’s 
ability to capture apparently 
disparate feelings succinctly, 
like they’re sides of the same 
coin — “this idea… where 
the sadness is sewed into the 
glory,” he wrote.

“Honey” is the sequel to 

The momentary bliss of ‘Honey’

MATT GALLATIN

Daily Arts Writer

Honey

Robyn

Konichiwa Records

“The Chilling Adventures of 

Sabrina” presents the titular 
teenage witch (Kiernan Shipka, 
“Mad Men”) with what we’re 
told is an impossible choice: 
Should the half-mortal, half-
witch accept her birthright, 
pledge herself to Satan, attend 
a magical school and join the 
Church of Night? Or should 
she keep on living a quiet life 
in Greendale, with friends she 
loves at Baxter High School and 
her doting boyfriend? It’s the 
tension in every adaptation of 
the Archie Comics series: The 
allure of magic perpetually in 
conflict with the adolescent 
desire to fit in.

Watching 
“Chilling 

Adventures,” 
though, 
it’s 

hard to shake the feeling that 
the foul world of the coven is 
really much fairer than our 
own. It’s deliciously morbid, 
enlivened by off-kilter dialogue 
delivered with sinister bravado 
— what language might sound 
like in a minor key. Sabrina’s 
quarrelsome 
aunts 
and 

guardians, Hilda (Lucy Davis, 
“Better Things”) and Zelda 
(Miranda Otto, “24: Legacy”) 
are the best reminder that 
the Church of Night is as fun 
as it is frightening. “Where’s 
Aunt Hilda?” Sabrina’s cousin 
Ambrose 
(Chance 
Perdomo, 

“Killed by My Debt”) wonders 
in the second episode. “She 
annoyed me, so I killed her and 
buried her in the yard,” Zelda 

replies matter-of-factly. A short 
while later, Hilda claws herself 
out of her grave and heads back 
to the kitchen in a huff, saying: 
“You’ve got to stop killing me!”

Resplendent 
with 
classic 

horror influences, the show 
shares some visual DNA with 
fellow gritty Archie Comic 
reboot 
“Riverdale.” 
But 

“Chilling Adventures” is on an 
extra dose of macabre; in the 
third episode, a vampish clique 
of witches helps Sabrina carry 

out a revenge plot that would 
make even Dark Betty blush.

It’s inevitable that the two 

worlds tugging at this heroine 
aren’t quite evenly matched. 
Once we’re given a taste of 
witchhood in all its glory, the 
teenage trials Baxter High 
throws at Sabrina are all a bit 
too pedestrian. Her relationship 
with the dopey Harvey (Ross 
Lynch, “Austin & Ally”) is so 
vanilla, we’re left practically 
begging her to choose Nicholas 
Scratch (Gavin Leatherwood, 
“Grown-ish”), the handsome 
young warlock competing for 
her attention. Sabrina’s mortal 
friends are sweet, but not much 
else. And Sabrina’s principal 
adding “The Bluest Eye” to 

a banned books list, though 
arguably a satanic act in itself, 
doesn’t hold a torch to the 
problems she has involving the 
actual Satan. In the effort to 
keep Sabrina down-to-earth, 
“Chilling Adventures” forgets 
that it’s far more interesting 
when those adventures are 
beneath the Earth.

Shipka’s Sabrina feels akin 

to her comic book predecessor, 
plucky and earnest, as if a 
big smile and can-do attitude 
might just keep the Dark Lord 
at bay. But it’s her mortal 
teenagerness, her disdain for 
authority 
and 
tendency 
to 

question everything, that adds 
some psychological depth to the 
show. The coven is presented 
as a path to empowerment, a 
way for Sabrina to become a 
great, unstoppable witch. But 
really, Sabrina points out, isn’t 
it all just in the service of the 
man down below? What’s so 
empowering about the choice 
between freedom and power?

Being branded a witch, once 

a punishment inflicted by the 
patriarchy, has recently been 
reclaimed as a feminist badge 
of honor — a way for women 
to signal their strength and 
defiance. It’s not so simple in 
the Church of Night, a rigid 
institution filled with the same 
kinds of jockish bullies that lurk 
the halls of Baxter High. “When 
will the world learn?” laments 
Sabrina’s 
possessed 
teacher 

Miss Wardwell (the fabulous 
Michelle 
Gomez, 
“Doctor 

Who”). “Women should be in 
charge of everything.”

Netflix’s ‘Sabrina’ reboot 
is a witching good time

MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN

Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

NETFLIX

“The Chilling 
Adventures of 

Sabrina”

Season 1

Netflix

ALBUM REVIEW

KONICHIWA RECORDS

“Saturday Night Live”’s 27th 

season premiere was scheduled 
to air just 18 days after the 9/11 
attacks. Reese Witherspoon was 
going to host and Alicia Keys was 
scheduled to perform as musical 
guest; it would be Seth Meyers 
and Amy Poehler’s first show as 
new cast members.

The question loomed over 

the heads of “SNL”’s staff: 
Will the show go on? Creator 
and executive producer Lorne 
Michaels answered that the 
show must go on. At 11:30 p.m. 
EST on Sept. 29, 2001, “Saturday 
Night Live” aired the first 
episode of its 27th season. The 
cold open featured former Mayor 
Rudy Giuliani alongside Lorne 
Michaels. Behind them stood a 
group of New York City’s finest 
— firefighters and police officers 
with uniforms still covered in 
the dust and ashes from Ground 
Zero. Mayor Giuliani spoke about 
the importance of preserving 
New York institutions like “SNL” 
and Michaels asked the question 
we were all thinking, “Can we 
be funny?” Giuliani responded 
with perfect timing, “Why start 
now?”

In a time where calamity 

befalls calamity, I look back on 
this moment in comedy history 
for guidance. In the wake of 
tragedy, can we be funny?

Stephen Colbert said, “You 

can’t laugh and be afraid at the 
same time.” If Colbert believes 
laughter is the best medicine for 
fear, then I believe as well. If fear 
can be cured by laughter, I think 
we should all take a big huff 
of laughing gas every damned 
morning. If fear can be cured by 
laughter, John Mulaney is my 
doctor and he just prescribed 
America with 1000 mg of side-
splitting snickers. If fear can be 
cured by laughter, then the only 
option in fearful times like these 
is to laugh — laugh with friends, 
laugh with family, laugh with 
your roommate, laugh with your 
cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, 
sisters, laugh with the people 
you hold dear.

In the wake of tragedy, can we 

be funny?

On Saturday night, hours after 

I discovered that 11 of my people 
were murdered in Pittsburgh 
during Shabbat services, I was 
to go on stage and make people 
laugh. My improv group was to 
perform, as we do every month, 
in Angell Hall, in front of an 
audience of our peers. But, now, 
how were we supposed to go on? 

How could we go on stage with 
the purpose of comedy during 
such tragedy? As students lined 
up outside Auditorium A, we 
asked ourselves the question if 

we could be funny. Could we 
really be funny for an audience 
that was just crying? Could we 
really be funny, as natives and 
strangers to Pittsburgh alike, 
for ourselves? In a well-timed 
response, we looked at one 
another and asked, “Why start 
now?”

All of the funds we collected 

from that show will be given 
to the families of the victims 
of the Tree of Life synagogue 

massacre. 
The 
laughter 
we 

created will fund part of a Shiva, 
a funeral, or the rebuilding of a 
temple destroyed by senseless 
hatred.

In the wake of tragedy, can we 

be funny?

If we stop living, laughing and 

loving, fear has won. The show 

must go on. And after we can 
wipe away the tears and look 
towards a better future, we are 
ready to live again; we are ready 
to laugh again.

After a national tragedy, we 

are in a period of mourning as 
a country. Acts of terror remind 
us how much hate there is in 
the world and it is beyond scary. 
Eleven people were murdered 
for being Jewish, and the Anti-
Defamation 
League 
reported 

that it was the deadliest attack 
on Jews in this country. In 
this terrifying time, it helps 
just a little to find the good in 
the world. To remember those 
who helped: the neighbors, the 
community and the brave service 
men and women. Because now 
more than ever, we need good, 
we need love, we need laughter.

In parting, dear reader, I 

offer you several anecdotes that 
never cease to put a smile on 
my face. A few funny lines that 
have circulated around many 
a Shabbat dinner table and 
Passover Seder. Some classic 
Jewish jokes that my uncle 
brings back time and again from 
his box of borscht belt comedy. 
Because we could all use a 
smile right now. Jews believe 
in the sanctity of numbers, and 
three is a good number — three 
patriarchs, three daily prayers 
and 
the 
Kabbalistic 
belief 

that there are three pillars in 
the mystical diagram of the 
Tree of Life. Therefore, I have 
listed three Jewish jokes for 
your laughing pleasure. Also, I 
couldn’t choose just one.

How do you know Jesus was 

Jewish? Four reasons: One, he 
was 30, unmarried and still 
living with his mother. Two, he 
went into his father’s business. 
Three, he thought his mother 
was a virgin. Four, his mother 
thought he was God.

Two elderly women are at 

a 
Catskill 
Mountain 
resort. 

And one of them says, “Boy, 
the food at this place is really 
terrible.” The other one says, 
“Yeah, I know — and such small 
portions.”

Three bubbies are sitting 

on a park bench. The first one 
lets out a heartfelt “Oy!” A few 
minutes later, the second bubbie 
sighs deeply and says “Oy vey!” 
A few minutes after that, the 
third bubbie brushes away a tear 
and moans, “Oy veyizmir!” To 
which the first bubbie replies: “I 
thought we agreed we weren’t 
going to talk about our children!”

Can we be funny?

DAILY HUMOR COLUMN

BECKY 

PORTMAN

The show must 
go on. And after 

we can wipe 
away the tears 

and look towards 
a better future, 
we are ready to 
live again; we are 

ready to laugh 

again

 Wednesday, October 31, 2018 — 5A
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com