The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, March 11, 2019 — 5A

MUSIC REVIEW

RUBYWORKS

Remember 
Hozier? 
It’s 
hard not to. For the past five 
years, his has been one of the 
names most often brought up 
in conversations along the 
lines of, When on Earth is that 
artist’s next album going to be 
here?
Five years isn’t the most 
extreme gap in the grand 
scheme of things, but the 
eponymous debut album of 
the Irish singer-songwriter, 
formally known as Andrew 
Hozier-Byrne, 
shook 
the 
world in a way that few debut 
albums are privileged 
to do. Hozier’s unique, 
seamless, heart-driven 
blend of folk, soul, rock 
and blues has left an 
indelible mark on the 
musical world, sparking 
many imitators but few 
who have risen to meet 
his level of talent and 
vision. 
A 
follow-up, 
naturally, was and has 
always been a tall order.
Luckily, 
Wasteland, 
Baby! delivers on every 
front and then some. 
It’s 
a 
comprehensive 
dive (album-cover-pun 
intended) into some of the 
depths of Hozier’s personality 
and values left unexplored on 
Hozier. Hozier gave us tender 
affection, sardonic accusation, 
campy friendship and druggy 
poetry. The new sophomore 
record 
builds 
on 
these 
strengths with its offerings 
of well-considered lyricism, 
thoughtful tribute, immersive 
rock 
and 
thoughtful, 
referential 
appreciation 
of 
music itself.
One of the traits that makes 
Wasteland, Baby! shine is the 
fact that Hozier knows how 
to 
compartmentalize. 
He’s 
aware that he’s borrowing 
from the libraries of many 
different genres, and although 
he doesn’t let this awareness 
guide him too strongly or 
box him in, he does use it to 
concentrate his genre fluencies 

in the areas where they’ll 
serve him the most effectively. 
His penchant for roiling rock 
surfaces on “No Plan” and 
“Dinner & Diatribes,” while 
other tracks like “Shrike,” 
“Almost (Sweet Music)” and 
“Wasteland, 
Baby!” 
recall 
his 
folksy 
sensibilities. 
A 
thread of natural expertise 
runs 
beneath 
everything, 
reaffirming Hozier’s position 
as a virtual chameleon among 
the adjacent and overlapping 
worlds of the genres he’s 
choosing to explore.
In many ways, the album as 
a whole adds up to a love letter 
to music. It opens, of course, 
with “Nina Cried Power,” the 

title track and lead single off 
of last September’s EP, the 
official mark of Hozier’s first 
release since 2014. An earth-
shaking 
collaboration 
with 
Mavis Staples, “Nina Cried 
Power” is a tribute to the 
anthemic and, yes, powerful 
protest work of musicians like 
Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, 
B.B. King, Bob Dylan and 
more. A thank you note turned 
up several notches, the opener 
shouts 
out 
Staples 
while 
benefiting from her inimitable 
vocals, and it places Hozier 
in a distinct and personable 
position: His music has never 
been anywhere near meek, 
but it can still be modest and 
grounded in a way that helps 
it locate its place amid a much 
vaster expanse of influence, 
history and musical mastery.
“Almost (Sweet Music)” is 

an apt follow-up, thanking 
musical masters like Duke 
Ellington and Chet Baker while 
providing a suitable segue into 
Hozier’s 
later 
explorations 
of his personal relationships 
and the ways in which they 
intersect 
with 
music 
in 
general. This is perhaps one 
of the most consistent veins 
characterizing 
the 
rest 
of 
the album. In addition to 
explicitly 
illustrating 
his 
artistic 
appreciations 
in 
songs like the celebratory, 
yet moderately low-key, “To 
Noise 
Making 
(Sing),” 
he 
demonstrates their existence 
in tandem with his own more 
personal 
preoccupations. 
His fusion of various 
alternative genres with 
odes to the past and 
present, and lyrics so 
good you could read 
them without the music 
and still fall in love, 
is by turns seductive, 
introspective, 
modern 
and 
wholly 
mythological.
The more personal 
elements 
of 
Hozier’s 
characteristics 
as 
an 
artist that made his 
debut so successful — 
his unapologetic anger, 
his ready weirdness and 
affinity for careful, unique 
lyrics that veer between the 
sensitive and the violent — 
are all still there on this new 
album, just engineered along 
different paths, which is the 
main crux of what makes 
Wasteland, Baby! so fitting and 
interesting. These 14 tracks 
are the proof we may have 
been waiting for, whether 
consciously or unconsciously, 
that 
Hozier 
hasn’t 
gone 
anywhere. He’s been here all 
along, thinking and listening 
and working and writing, and 
waiting, like the shrike, for the 
perfect time to pounce. True 
to the album cover indeed, 
Hozier is ready to submerge us, 
to tug us along the depths of a 
place fully understood by no 
one and illuminate something 
for us amid a shipwreck. We 
should be so lucky.

Hozier’s sophomore album 
proves he’s here to stay

LAURA DZUBAY
Daily Arts Wrtier

Snow 
still 
blows 
over 
Michigan 
in 
March, 
but 
Detroiters can now enjoy a 
day at “The Beach,” an art 
installation designed as a ball 
pit beach.
“The Beach” is indoors but 
thematically emulates a real 
beach, with sloping shorelines, 
umbrella-shaded 
lounge 
chairs, a lifeguard and blow-
up beach balls. But instead of 
water, “The Beach” is filled 
with 400,000 plastic balls.
Located in the heart of 
downtown, one can go for a 
swim at “The Beach” right 
after ice skating across the 
street at Campus Martius. It’s 
free and open to the public, 
accepting both walk-ins and 
online reservations.
The exhibit quietly debuted 

on Friday, Mar. 1 with pictures 
of Detroiters enjoying “The 
Beach” hitting Instagram. By 
Saturday, reservations for a 
swim were booked for the next 
two weeks. When I went Sunday 
afternoon, the line for walk-ins 
wrapped all around the lobby. 
Surprisingly, 
it 
wasn’t 
just 

kids and their parents. Trendy 
young adults were swimming 

too, Snapchatting their entire 
experience.
The 
artists 
behind 
“The 
Beach,” Alex Mustonen, Daniel 
Arsham and Ben Porto, are 
partners at the New York 
design studio Snarkitecture. 
The firm is best known for 
designing unique brick and 
mortar stores for KITH, 
a high-end footwear and 
clothing retailer. Many of 
their art installations and 
architecture 
projects 
are 
collaborative, 
immersive 
designs, 
often 
built 
within existing spaces or 
architecture.
“The Beach” debuted in 
Washington D.C. in 2015 and 
has since been installed in 
cities all across the world, 
including 
Paris, 
Sydney 
and 
Bangkok. 
Detroit’s 
installment was produced 
in collaboration with Library 
Street Collective, a Detroit art 

gallery. The local contemporary 
art gallery is behind many 
art installations in Detroit, 
including the Rainbow City 
Roller Rink that previously 
occupied “The Beach”’s space 
at 1001 Woodward.
A ball pit may conjure up 
memories of a colorful Chuck 
E. 
Cheese 
nightmare, 
but 
“The Beach” is sleek, cool and 
inviting. A wide open space 
with mirrors along all the walls 
make it feel even bigger. It’s 
lively, but by no means crowded. 
The plastic balls are recyclable 
and antimicrobial, so it’s both 
environmentally friendly and 

sanitary (as sanitary as a ball 
pit can be, anyway). Like many 
of 
Snarkitecture’s 
projects, 
“The 
Beach” 
is 
all-white, 
including the “shore” and the 
sea of balls. The only pops of 
color come from blow-up toys 
such as a pink flamingo or a 
striped inner-tube.
Two piers reach out into the 
pit where swimmers can jump 
into the pit, and there’s an island 
in the middle that visitors can 
swim to. Moving around in the 
pit is surprisingly difficult. It’s 
very relaxing to lay immersed 
in the balls — perhaps even 
more so than being in the water 

at a real beach. My 45-minute 
swim session was mostly spent 
lounging in the ball pit. Partly 
because it was so comfortable, 
partly because I ran out of 
breath every time I tried to 
get off my back. Both visually 
cool and physically soothing, 
“The Beach” is a unique, fun 
exhibition.
For modern art appreciators 
that enjoy an immersive and 
interactive experience, “The 
Beach” Detroit will remain 
open Wednesday to Sunday 
each week through Apr. 14th — 
so get your swim in while you 
can.

There’s 
an 
art 
to 
trash 
television. The idiosyncrasies, 
the poorly veiled intervention 
by producers and the staged 
emotional 
outbursts 
are 
a 
delicate formula. Its raw and 
repugnant power comes with 
great responsibility that only few 
can weild. “Mexican Dynasties” 
appears to have all the makings 
of the new best-worst 
show on television — 
come on, it’s produced 
by 
Bravo. 
Somehow, 
though, 
this 
show 
no one wanted falls 
triumphantly 
flat 
of 
being 
anything 
noteworthy.
“Mexican Dynasties” 
follows three families 
of 
self-proclaimed 
Mexican royalty living 
it up to the fullest 
in Mexico City. The 
three families are the 
Allendes, the Bessudos 
and 
the 
Madrazos. 
They each made their 
fortunes in different ways: luxury 
cars, soft drinks and just being 
handsome, respectively. While 
they’re each different, I really 
couldn’t tell you which is which. 
The plot is simple: Rich people 
are weird. The Allendes have 
zero boundaries. Their son Adán 
is 27, still lives with them and 
spends each morning in their bed 
for “cuddles.” He had a beloved 
parrot who died, so they stuck 
it in the freezer for two weeks 

until the rest of the family got 
back from vacation in Istanbul. 
Again, rich people being weird. 
Occasionally, a well-placed crack 
about Trump’s tweets or the 
wall sneaks its way into their 
conversation, which is fun.
One of the best parts of the 
show is the help. Maids, cooks 
and the like are featured in the 
“interview” segments of the 
show to dish on the strangeness 
of the families. When I say “best,” 
it’s really telling because the 

servants don’t really dish all that 
much. Their comments amount 
mostly to saying the families are 
weird. Which we knew and could 
see.
There are lots of really great 
bad television shows. “Little 
Women: LA” is not only bad, 
but hilarious and borderline 
fetishized. It at least presents a 
moral quandary to ponder and 
forget about when the women 
start fighting. Likewise, “90 

Day Fiancé” is a smorgasbord of 
awkwardness and cringe in the 
most wonderful and alarming 
ways. “Dance Moms” is a travesty 
of pure genius. The cutthroat 
“Lord of the Files” atmosphere 
that surrounds these moms, as 
their kids flail about to terrible 
music is simply a thing of beauty.
But that is not “Mexican 
Dynasties.” This is a show 
whose only aim seems to present 
the 
strangeness 
or 
general 
ordinariness of rich Mexicans. It’s 
not really exciting or 
fun. It’s not so strange 
that it makes its viewers 
uncomfortable, 
with 
the flair and stumbling 
of “Married at First 
Sight.” No, “Mexican 
Dynasties” simply is. It 
just exists. Not a whole 
lot happens in this 
show, which is fine. As 
the families announce 
in the opening of the 
show, 
“Americans 
don’t know shit about 
Mexico.” 
Which 
is 
fair. I certainly don’t. 
I also don’t know who 
this show is meant 
for. Are we supposed to see rich 
Mexicans just existing or being 
odd? Because if that was the 
aim, they’ve done it. I see these 
rich Mexicans. They are pretty 
normal, 
with 
idiosyncrasies 
here and there. It plays out more 
like “The Truman Show” than 
a reality show. It doesn’t make 
good television, but it does make 
a point. Mexicans and rich people 
are pretty normal. Nothing to see 
here.

‘Mexican Dynasties’ is 
poorly crafted trash TV

MAXWELL SCHWARZ
Daily Arts Wrtier

‘Wasteland, 
Baby!’

Hozier

Rubyworks Records

TV REVIEW

BRAVO

‘Mexican 
Dynasties’

Series Premiere

Bravo

Tuesdays, 10 p.m.

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

DETROIT FREE PRESS

‘The Beach’ installation 
unveiled over in Detroit

DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Wrtier

One can go for a 
swim at “The Beach” 
right after ice skating 
across the street

