The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, March 26, 2019 — 5
Since its creation, MUSIC
Matters
has
brought
an
unbelievable array of big-name
artists to campus, including J.
Cole, Lil Yachty, Ben Folds, 2
Chainz, Migos and Louis The
Child. In typical fashion, this
year’s SpringFest 2019 brings
the mighty A$AP Ferg
to
the
University’s
Hill Auditorium on
Apr. 16 as a part of the
organization’s annual
lifestyle festival a la
SXSW.
SpringFest,
the
largest
student-run
event on campus, is
an
all-day
festival
and nighttime benefit
concert.
By
day,
attendees can enjoy
showcase work from
over 65 other student
organizations,
providing numerous
opportunities
for
demonstration
and
exploration
of
the
student
life
that
makes the University
unique. In addition,
SpringFest
features
an outlet for student
start-ups
and
businesses to display
their work to a wider
audience. By night, attendees
can experience an intimate,
Michigan-only concert in Hill
Auditorium.
Typically,
Hill
features
orchestras
and
theatrical
performances,
but
MUSIC
Matters is breaking the mold
with an unprecedented rap
concert from one of the most
iconic names in hip hop today.
A$AP Ferg gained notoriety
with the rest of the A$AP
Mob on the coattails of A$AP
Rocky.
(There
are
many
A$APs.)
A
coalition
from
Harlem, the Mob ushered in
a new combination of hard-
hitting New York gangster rap
and boomy Southern trap that
quite literally took the hip-hop
world by storm. While Rocky
is certainly the poster child
of the group, Ferg is a close
second, developing a personal
a sound that is particularly
more aggressive than that
of the Mob or its pretty-boy
leader.
Since 2013, Ferg has released
two albums, Trap Lord and
Always Strive and Prosper, and
one mixtape, Still Striving. In
2013, he was crowned Rookie
of The Year for his single
“Shabba” at the BET Music
Awards. With a discography
full of party-made bangers,
Ferg is primed to deliver a
tasty trap treat dipped in 808s
and
jocularly
intimidating
one-liners to SpringFest 2019.
“My goal is to create the best
possible concert experience
for
the
Michigan
student
body,” Talent and Concert
Chair Marty Hubbard said.
“A$AP Ferg as our SpringFest
2019 headliner lives up to
that.”
On top of a day stage, food
trucks
and
pop-up
shops,
SpringFest is also continuing
its CoMMunity Partnership
initiative, which provides a
grant for philanthropic student
ventures at the University. For
this year’s SpringFest, MUSIC
Matters joined with Heal-
Move-Shift
and
Michigan
Movement
to
encourage
educational accessibility for
underprivileged students. A
variety of projects funded
by these initiatives will be
showcased this year.
MUSIC
Matters
Social Venture Chair
Katie
Schwartz
said,
“We
are
so
thankful to have the
opportunity to share
in
and
contribute
to
their
respective
impactful
efforts,
from
facilitating
local
high
school
seminars about the
positive relationship
of music and mental
health
with
Heal-
Move-Shift
to
lending
a
helping
hand to the homeless
population
of
Ann
Arbor with Michigan
Movement.”
Part
of
the
SpringFest
proceeds
will
be
used to support and
grow the CoMMunity
Partnership initiative
further.
The
festival’s
social
initiatives
extend to all aspects, ranging
from emphases on community
outreach
to
zero
waste.
SpringFest 2019’s full daytime
schedule is still to come.
Tickets for the show at Hill
are on sale now, starting at $15
for students with valid UMID
and $25 for the general public.
They are available at the
Michigan Union Ticket Office,
which is located underground
at the Michigan League during
the Union’s renovation, or at
the official MUSIC Matters
website.
SpringFest 2019 brings
A$AP Ferg, other talent
JACK BRANDON
Managing Arts Editor
MIKE WATKINS
Daily Music Editor
EVENT PREVIEW
MUSIC MATTERS
MUSIC Matters’s
SpringFest
Hill Auditorium
Apr. 16
Tickets $15 with valid UMID, $25 for
general public
MUSIC MATTERS
It’s not hard to imagine how
strange the reunion of American
Football must have been for its
members. Their 1997 self-titled
album, which was recorded when
the band was in their last year of
college in Urbana, combined earnest
energy and understated wistfulness
in a style that has been often
imitated. Among a certain group of
people it’s become a sort of avatar
for the fleeting, muddled feelings
of youth and early adulthood. Its
influence
can’t
be
overstated,
and rightly so —
the album found
a sweet spot in
between
the
various currents of
music at the time
that has proven a
fruitful jumping-
off point for an
entire generation
of musicians.
When
American
Football
re-formed
in 2014, the members of the
group were pushing 40, and the
band accordingly had the task
of fitting their diaristic material
into something that benefits their
status as the elders of emo, with
other musical projects, careers
and families behind them. Their
2016 album (also self-titled) was
accordingly a little awkward even as
it was more technically proficient,
reflecting nearly two decades of
experience. LP2 frequently felt as
though the group was trying to
transpose the malaise of middle
age to the “see-through” teenage
angst that their debut leans on. For
anyone not familiar with vocalist
Mike Kinsella’s solo project Owen,
it’s almost strange to hear him sing
“Oh how I wish that I were me / The
man that you first met and married”
with that same naive cadence.
LP2 is also a little more sonically
conventional. It retains some of
the irregular time signatures and
bendy, vocal guitar playing that
added a crucial third dimension
to LP1, but more often than not it
settles into a regular groove.
The group’s third (again self-
titled) album clears out the band’s
old sound pretty much altogether,
replacing it with a saturated,
effervescent
style
closer
to
shoegaze or post-rock. From the
opening cascade of glockenspiel
and vibraphone on “Silhouettes,”
it’s clear the band is working with
new materials — there’s an almost
orchestral grandeur to the album,
a panoramic sweep wholly separate
from the stripped-down sound
more familiar to the band. The
recently-added bassist and multi-
instrumentalist
Nate
Kinsella
(cousin of the vocalist) adds several
new tone colors, including mallet
percussion, a 12-string guitar and
a Mellotron. There’s much more
fine-tuned detail and several levels
of distance to play with. American
Football was heretofore defined by a
certain economy of means, and LP3
feels like the first time the group has
seriously experimented with new
instruments, relegating the guitar
duet to one element among many.
These songs are also much
broader in scope than anything
the band has ever done before.
“Silhouettes” and “Doom In Full
Bloom” are both nearly eight
minutes long, and most of the other
songs hover around five and six
minutes. If we were dealing with
the kind of awkwardly self-pitying
lyrics on LP2, this
could be tiresome
— but Kinsella’s
lyricism has, for
the
first
time,
a
sophisticated
elegance to it. It’s
still
as
earnest
as we’re used to,
but without the
starkness of LP2.
It’s still possible
to hear some of the
qualities of LP1 in
LP3 — the intertwining guitars in
“Every Wave” and “Mine To Miss,”
Kinsella’s charming short vocal
phrases — but I somehow doubt
that someone finding American
Football via LP3 would understand
the exuberant energy of the band’s
first iteration. For all its power, LP3
is pretty obvious and even veers
toward filmic at times — it doesn’t
have any of the inscrutability and the
“wait, what was that?” quality that
made LP1 so great. LP3 is mature
and settled without repeating itself,
but it invites speculation about what
the band might have done had they
not had to bridge a 15-year gap.
American Football’s third
album is new, despite title
EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer
ALBUM REVIEW
POLYPHONIC
American Football (LP3)
American Football
Polyvinyl
This summer, I’ll be taking the
LSAT and applying to law schools.
Somewhere over the course of the
next two years, I’ll likely be moving
out of my home state of Michigan for
the first (official) time to attend law
school. For some reason, I’m more
excited than nervous about all of
these things. My decision to go into
law is not for the status or for the
money, like many assume, but for
the opportunity to serve and defend
marginalized voices, to work on our
prison system and, optimistically, to
do my part in making our country
what I know it can be.
You’ll hate law school, my family
and well-meaning friends say. You
know you’re going to be working 70
hours a week. I wonder, though, if
they’d think differently if I was a
man. Men are cut out for hard work,
for long hours, for doing whatever
it takes to “provide.” Women,
apparently, are not.
When I think about law school,
I think about the hell that Dr.
Christine Blasey-Ford has been
living in since the Kavanaugh
hearing, while her abuser sits on the
Supreme Court and accepts visiting
positions at law schools. I wonder
if someone like him will be my
professor. I think about President
Trump’s
continued
accusations
against and slandering of Hillary
Clinton almost three years after the
election has ended. I think of how
the President can be excused for
what seems like anything, while a
small misstep by a female politician
amounts to an explosion of criticism
and dire threats to their careers.
Congresswoman
Ocasio-Cortez
paid more of a consequence for
dancing in college than Trump did
for openly boasting about his tactics
for sexual assault. I think about how
the female candidates in the next
election cycle will almost positively
be treated the same — What is
she wearing? Shouldn’t she be a
mother? Won’t she be too moody and
unpredictable to serve our country?
Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister
of New Zealand, mourned with
her country after the Christchurch
attack less than two weeks ago. Six
days later, Ardern announced that
all military-style semiautomatic
weapons
and
ammunition
magazines that can be modified
into these types of weapons will
be nationally banned. Our U.S.
government offered only thoughts
and prayers for victims of countless
mass shootings in our country; I was
going to list some here, but there
are too many. Ardern, a woman,
proved more fit to serve her people
after one instance of hate and
violence than our current and past
administrations have in hundreds
of opportunities to do the same.
I’m conscious of my gender when
I call myself a writer, too. I once said
this at a party and was asked, Oh, so
what do you write? You journal and
stuff, right? I quickly learned that
men are also valiant for choosing
a creative field over a professional
one — their work is important,
profound,
world-changing
—
while women are simply wasting
their time. Women writers have
historically been written off as
“emotional” or “melodramatic.”
Male writers — Ernest Hemingway,
J.D. Salinger, David Foster Wallace
— have been hailed as literary
icons for years, if not decades. I’ve
never been in a writing workshop
where David Foster Wallace has not
been brought up and subsequently
praised. I always sit silently, letting
the
discussion
progress
into
something like worship. In my head,
I wonder if we will ever talk about
his abuse toward Mary Karr — a
brilliant writer, perhaps even more
brilliant than Wallace himself. I
wonder if we’ll ever talk about
Hemingway’s alcoholism and bar
fights in a way that isn’t glamorous,
or Salinger’s abusive relationship
with Joyce Maynard when she was
only 18 and he was 53, which she
has been ostracized and blamed
for for almost 50 years. I’ve had
men who’ve never taken a creative
nonfiction class, or even read a
memoir for that matter, explain to
me how to master the art of creative
nonfiction, even after I’d told them
that I’m a creative nonfiction writer
with countless workshops and
essays and memoirs under my belt.
We should look to Ardern for
example. We should look to our
female writers, lawyers, politicians,
teachers and mothers’ examples.
We ignore women doing hard and
just work simply because they
are women. If we allow women
of all races, demographics and
professions the space to step out of
the shadow of men, maybe we’ll find
the change we’re looking for — and
the change that we need.
Women push us forward
CULTURE NOTEBOOK
JENNA BARLAGE
Daily Arts Writer