The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, March 27, 2019 — 5A

What’s louder — the music or the 
man? The more appropriate question 
in today’s digital age would be: 
What’s louder, the music or the media 
surrounding the musician?
There is no lack of dialogue when 
it comes to the increasingly scary 
power media holds to dictate what 
we listen to — consistently, Buzzfeed 
articles are titled something along 
the lines of “How Social Media 
Has Changed The Music Industry.” 
The discourse is even more present 
around buzzwords like “DIY artist.” 
What’s more interesting, however, 
is the development in the last couple 
of years, wherein an artist’s media 
presence has become quintessential. 
It’s an age when listeners do not just 
subscribe to the music; they subscribe 
to the media representation of the 
art simultaneously or before they 
subscribe to the sound. Yes, it’s a long-
standing trend — a band like KISS 
isn’t just a sound, it’s a phenomenon. 
However, looking at 2019 thus far 
and looking towards the future of 
music, listeners are not even aware 
of the subconscious associations 
and characterizations that develop 
the full image of an artist’s sound 
based on the content we interact 
with — when you listen to a song on 
Spotify you are not listening solely 
to the song, but rather the implied 
characterizations of the sound based 
on the media we subscribe to. Even 
scarier is the fact that the artists we 
react to only reach our ears because 
media launched that person or group.
Today, media dominates every 
aspect of the human experience, so 
much so that almost every emerging 
artist only breaks through when 
accompanied with viral YouTube 
videos, an impressive twitter or 
Instagram, a Hollywood presence, 
or something along those lines. 
It is almost impossible to launch 
yourself as an artist unless you have 
accompanying media that creates 
a distinct vibe around your work. 
The examples are endless: Clairo 
establishes herself as queen of teenage 
nostalgia with 29 million views on 
her hit YouTube video “Pretty Girl.” 
The crowds go apeshit over Maggie 
Rogers when a video of a master class 
with Pharrell Williams goes viral. 
Artists like Troye Sivan and Conan 
Gray each had fully established 

aesthetic, lifestyle YouTube channels 
with millions of subscribers before 
launching into the music scene.
Most notably, the band Half 
Alive had practically no listens 
until the launch of their beautifully 
coordinated “Still Feel” music video. 
Half Alive is a perfect example of 
the idea that the media experience 
of music is absolutely essential to 
listening power. No longer does 
the music come first, which is then 
supported 
by 
interviews, 
“Tiny 
Desk” 
performances 
and 
social 
media that promotes the band and 
establishes viewer connection. Now, 
the media comes first. A viewer 
clicks on a “recommended” post or 
video, and they love the sound, yes, 
but there’s a space in the back of 
their brains that becomes obsessed 
and connected with the media (the 
beautiful appearance, the swaggy 
persona, etc.) I like to call it “The 
Mesh.” It’s an interlaced structure of 
appearance, dancing, lighting, vibe, 
the mannerisms and the slang. Yes, 
the sound is a part of this mesh, but 
it’s not necessarily the leading aspect.
This idea of the “mesh” that 
lies in our subconscious came to 
the forefront of my brain when 
listening to a new favorite band of 
mine, Wallows. I found the band 
through Netflix. The lead singer 
of Wallows is Dylan Minette, who 
stars in hit Netflix series “13 Reasons 
Why” as Clay Jensen. Even if you 
haven’t watched “13 Reasons Why,” 
there’s a high chance you’ve seen 
the face: He’s the center of multiple 
memes on twitter, Reddit threads 
and even recognizable for his early 
appearances on shows like “Drake 
& Josh,” “Lost” and “Scandal.” This 
led to a personal investigation of 
Wallows’s rise to fame — did they 
gain most of their popularity from 
Dylan’s fame? Most certainly. Are 
they still extremely deserving of that 
recognition? Most certainly. Their 
sound is super cool. 
In almost every interview with 
Wallows, Minette is asked about 
his role in “13 Reasons Why.” 
Specifically, 
Minette 
told 
Paste 
Magazine: “The show that I’m on, 
I’m under a contract on that and stuff 
and that’s something that I got to 
do and that’s cool and whatever but 
just anytime we have we are doing 
this non-stop because it’s what we 
wanna do.” Social media is usually 
made up of at least half self-conscious 
representation. For Minette, he has 
no control over constant comments 

on all forms of Wallows social media 
stating sentiments such as: “Severely 
disappointed their fan base is a bunch 
of 13 Yr. old fan girls who watch 
Thirteen Reasons Why, ruined the 
concert.”
This 
trend 
comes 
from 
a 
longstanding notion in music. When 
you go to a concert and you gain 
face-to-face recognition with the 
artist, you listen much more. For 
me, going to a concert made me feel 
like the artist was mine. The media 
surrounding the artist is that same 
feeling: They become yours when the 
content you receive each day fully 
develops the vibe of who they are.
All of this being said, there is 
a strong counter example: Frank 
Ocean. This is a man whose music 100 
percent comes before the media. He 
is a minimalist in all media aspects, 
yet his music is an inspiration to 
the majority of emerging artists 
today because he’s a musical genius. 
Although Frank’s emergence into 
recognition does not fall into media 
trends or time frame I speak of, 
even he acknowledges media’s role 
in creating dialogue, fully shaping 
how we see artists and how we see 
their music. In a recent interview 
with GQ, he states: “I feel like there 
was dissonance between how I was 
seen by the audience and where I 
was actually … But there’s also the 
idea of dialogue and discourse and 
conversation — like theater where the 
audience can interrupt you versus the 
television.” Frank goes on to explain 
how he feels the way he is seen is 
not even close to correct, and it’s 
still not correct, which went into his 
thought process behind making his 
Instagram public. But he steps into 
the public Instagram scene, because 
media gives you a step towards 
control of developing the idea around 
an artist. Frank is a rare case of a 
music God who doesn’t need any 
source of media to launch his sound, 
but even he recognizes the media 
landscape of establishing how you 
are represented.
Visual press is everything. To 
listeners everywhere: The content 
we view each day is the sound. 
Whether Wallows likes it or not, the 
back of the brain association with 
cutie “Clay Jensen” from Selena 
Gomez-produced “Thirteen Reasons 
Why” is an integral undercurrent 
of Wallows’s sound, and there’s no 
avoiding it. Think about your favorite 
music, and think about what’s behind 
the love of it.

Do we love sound or media?

Alex Honnold is one of the best 
rock climbers in the world. Alex 
Honnold regularly eats directly 
out of the pan using a spatula as a 
spoon. Alex Honnold is a giant, a 
visionary, a profoundly inspiring 
person whose story reminds me 
of all the good human beings are 
capable of. Alex Honnold is a big 
dumb buffoon who downplays 
every insane thing he does to the 
point that fellow climbers call 
him Alex “No Big Deal” Honnold.
The boy has layers.
Some background: Alex is 
having a bit of a moment right 
now. You might have seen him on 
viral YouTube videos, breaking 
down climbing scenes in movie 
based on realism. Or maybe you’ve 
seen his TED Talk. Or maybe you 
saw “Free Solo,” the documentary 
film about his 2017 ropeless ascent 
of Yosemite’s El Capitan Freerider 

route that recently won an Oscar. 
He’s arguably the most visible and 
popular climber in mainstream 
media since Edmund Hillary 
himself.
His free solo of El Cap is one 
of the most singular and mind-
blowing accomplishments I’ve 
seen a single person achieve in 
my lifetime. The wall is nearly 
3000 feet of sheer granite, and 
Freerider is a notoriously difficult 
path to the top (rated 5.13c in 
climbing circles, meaning that 
even with a rope and protective 
equipment, people very rarely ((if 
ever)) manage to climb it without 
falling). It’s hard to put into words 
the magnitude of what it means 
to climb this thing with nothing 
but a chalk bag strapped around 
the waist — when Alex completed 
his climb, a lot of people in the 
climbing community compared 
it to the moon landing. The New 
Yorker put it simply when they 
covered 
the 
event: 
“Another 
passage can be written in the 

annals of human achievement.”
Like 
most 
people 
who 
encounter Alex’s work, I’m pretty 
much endlessly inspired by him. 
His achievements induce awe, 
in the most biblical sense of the 
word. It’s impossible to be clever 
or cynical when confronted with 
the image of a person dangling by 
two fingers 2000 feet above the 
ground, grinning as though there’s 
no place he’d rather be (spoiler: 
there isn’t). Alex Honnold, for 
me, has been a breath of fresh 
air, an antidote to the poison 
that radiates so much media in 
2019. The appeal is simple: He 
found what he loves most in the 
world, and dedicated his life to its 
ruthless and relentless pursuit. 
In the process of living his life 
exactly the way he wanted to, 
he changed a sport forever and 
redefined the boundaries of fear.
In his book, “Alone on the 
Wall,” Alex explains that he 
primarily gets asked two types 
of questions: Why he free solos 

(climbing with absolutely no 
ropes, gear, or aid of any kind), 
and if he’s scared — both of which 
are polite ways of asking if he 
realizes how easily he could die 
at any minute. To respond, he has 
developed a strange but weirdly 
comforting 
math 
surrounding 
risk 
and 
consequence 
over 
the years. In his mind, he’s 
always climbing well within his 
comfortable range of abilities, 
so even though free soloing has 
high consequence (falling and 
dying), the risks for him are low. 
He’s worked methodically over 
15 years of climbing to expand 
the range of experiences within 
which he doesn’t feel fear.
All of this strikes me as a 
convoluted way of saying that 
he’s reached a level of excellence 
in 
skill 
that 
makes 
failure 
increasingly less likely. You could 
take that as a certain modicum 
of arrogance — and you probably 
should — but it’s an arrogance that 
works for him and that’s allowed 
him to do incredible things. I also 
take that response with a grain of 
salt — “Alone on the Wall” is Alex 
presenting himself carefully to his 
readers. Other climbers are quick 
to call bullshit on his convoluted 
risk/reward 
equations, 
noting 
that he can’t control everything, 
that it’s a matter of when, not if, 
he falls.
Alex would be the first to 
tell you that he’s thought about 
this, and considered it deeply. 
He explains in his book that he 
doesn’t understand the point of 
living a life without passion, and 
if that mortality is inevitable 
anyway, why not go out doing 
what he loves. But he’s also clear 
about the fact that he’s not a 
daredevil — he loves living and 
loves climbing, and he’s said many 
times in his book that he steers 
clear of any kind of thrill-seeking. 
He writes: “There is no adrenaline 
rush. If I get an adrenaline rush, 
it means that something has gone 
horribly wrong.” He’s not trying 
to get away with anything — 
instead he’s on a lifelong project to 
slowly and incrementally become 

a braver, better person.
When the filmmakers asked 
him in “Free Solo” why he lives 
the way he does, he gave an 
answer that’s been ringing in 
my head since I first heard it 
months ago (and the answer that 
I can only imagine has haunted 
him years). He puts it simply: “If 
you’re looking for perfection, free 
soloing is as close as you can get.”
He’s not wrong. One mistake 
and it’s all over. And let’s be 
absolutely clear here: A “mistake” 
in soloing is placing a thumb and 
index finger a millimeter too 
close together. Or letting his eyes 
wander from the rock in front of 
him for exactly one second. It’s 
not just focus or physical stamina 
that’s required to free solo at 
Alex’s level — it’s absolute clarity. 
While he’s climbing, Alex is 
paying attention to the movement 
of every muscle and sinew in his 
body. He knows exactly what 
he’s doing and exactly who he 
is. All the philosophical things 
that for most people remain 
conceptual — self-actualization, 
self-sufficiency, staying present 
— aren’t an abstract for Alex 
Honnold. They’re a matter of life 
or death.
It’s easy to get caught up 
in the grand scale of all of his 
achievements — the legendary 
free solos he has pioneered, the 
sweeping expeditions in Chad, 
Morocco, Alaska and Patagonia, 
the multiday big wall linkups in 
which he shattered every known 
speed record in Yosemite. But 
despite all that, it’s the minutiae 
of his work that I find the most 
fascinating, because it’s clear that 
the details are what his survival 
relies on. He dreams big, yes, but 
what differentiates Alex from 
others with big abstract goals is 
his ability to break down every 
dream into its components and 
create a multistep plan as to how 
to achieve them.
Case in point: In both “Alone 
on the Wall,” and in the film, 
Alex talks about his feet a lot. In 
a conversation in the film with 
fellow 
legendary 
free 
soloist 

Peter Croft, the two talk about 
their favorite part of soloing: how 
firmly rooted their feet get in the 
wall when they’re in the zone. 
These are two men who’ve scaled 
massive peaks and shattered 
records, but notice where they 
find the real joy — in the process, 
in the component parts of a big 
achievement. They don’t focus 
on the thrill of reaching the 
top, or the daredevil moments 
in which they almost died, but 
on the feeling of rootedness. In 
the book, he describes feeling 
perfectly planted when he’s high 
on a wall, climbing with complete 
certainty that he won’t fall. “It’s 
that certainty,” he writes, “that 
keeps me from falling.”
There’s a lot to learn from Alex 
Honnold, but to me that’s the 
biggest piece — the ability to feel 
rooted anywhere you go, to build 
yourself a place where you’re 
certain you belong. Alex has made 
a living by making a home out of 
some of the most hostile places on 
earth — deserts and tundras and 
the tallest peaks in the world. He’s 
alone up there on the wall, yes, but 
when he’s up there he’s entirely 
complete. His solitude while 
climbing is pure, because when 
he’s up there, he needs no one and 
nothing but himself. It’s a quiet 
confidence that sustains him, a 
wholehearted belief in himself, 
his hands and his strength.
When I watch Alex Honnold 
climb, it makes me crave that 
perfect solitude, the simultaneous 
rootedness and weightlessness he 
experiences when the sum total 
of his existence in that moment 
hinges on putting one foot in front 
of the other. Alex describes that 
feeling as ‘perfection.’ But I like 
to think of it as something a little 
more complicated, and a little 
more human: pure and absolute 
joy. We sometimes conflate being 
alone with being lonely, but in 
doing so, we forget how magical 
perfect quiet can be, how good it 
is to be alone. Feet firmly planted, 
one on front of the other — you 
always have everything you need 
to create something beautiful.

To Alex Honnold, the only
man to belay into my heart

YOUTUBE

BOOKS NOTEBOOK

Initially, Andrew Bird’s 
latest album, My Finest Work, 
felt 
lackluster. 
Granted, 
when 
it 
comes 
to 
the 
musical stylings of Andrew 
Bird, “easy listening” isn’t 
his forte. I don’t mean 
“easy listening” as in chill 
relaxation, but rather as low-
brain-energy music. 
The type of music 
you play when you 
trudge home world-
weary at the end 
of the week; the 
music 
you 
listen 
to when you want 
to turn your brain 
off. At first listen, I 
made the mistake 
of 
sitting 
down 
to a musical meal 
with Andrew Bird 
in the midst of a 
week’s 
whirlwind. 
Unsurprisingly, 
my brain balked at 
Bird’s demand for 
undivided 
focus 
and 
attention; 
multilayered lyrics 
and symbolism were 
drowned in my mind’s futile 
search for a catchy, jaunty 
tune.
Again, that’s not to say 
Andrew Bird’s music is not 
catchy, or that it isn’t suited 
for a lazy, sunny day. It is all 
those things, but also much, 
much more. And that “more” 
is where the true power of 
the album arises.
With 
his 
trademark 
orchestration of heavy bass 
and 
light-footed 
violin, 
Bird’s masterful songwriting 
is center-stage. The many 
layers of his songs are hidden 
within unique lyrics and non-
traditional song structure.
Songs 
like 
“Sisyphus” 
recall haunting echoes of 
antiquity, harkening back 
to the ancient Greek myth 
of Sisyphus, a sly trickster 
who cheated death twice. As 
eternal punishment Sisyphus 

was charged with carrying a 
boulder up a hill, never to 
succeed in this maddening 
task. The myth was meant 
to warn others from folly of 
trying to cheat the natural 
order. However, in his song 
Andrew Bird seems to speak 
from the mind of Sisyphus 
— the condemned — calling 
to “Let it roll, let it crash 
down.” In a sense, the song 
speaks to the futility of 

living a life within borders 
and expectations, of taking 
control of your own fate.
Later in the album, “Don 
the Struggle” provides a 
stylistic breath of fresh air. 
The song starts slow, to a 
steady, weary march. Bird 
sings “Let’s settle down / 
We’re all just stumbling 
down,” 
echoing 
a 
sense 
of 
bone-deep 
exhaustion 
— but instead of physical 
weariness, the implication 
points again to the burden of 
greater expectations. Later 
the song breaks out into a 
sudden burst of vibrancy. The 
tempo drastically increases, 
like a car speeding up. 
Then someone slams on the 
breaks, and the energy dive-
bombs back into the somber 
march. In the energetic haze, 
Bird sings “But dissonance 
is energy while consonance 

reminds you of poverty” 
— another critique of the 
suffocation of the cookie-
cutter lifestyle. 
The final track, “Bellevue 
Bridge Club,” is comfortable, 
slow and eerie. What seems at 
first to be a somewhat sweet 
song quickly becomes a little 
… questionable when one 
tunes into the lyrics. Andrew 
Bird crafts a strange, twisted 
love song, singing “I will hold 
you 
hostage 
… 
You know there’s 
no you without 
me.” It’s almost 
reminiscent 
of 
Stockholm 
syndrome. 
However, 
the 
line, 
“And 
I 
will 
hold 
you 
hostage/ 
Make 
you part of my 
conspiracy,” hints 
at 
something 
deeper: Following 
the 
theme 
of 
the 
rest 
of 
the 
album 
of 
breaking through 
limitations, 
this 
last 
song 
symbolizes 
the 
perspective of the 
majority: Those who form the 
rules want everyone else to 
fall in line. But, in fact, rather 
than an encouragement of 
the herd-mentality, Andrew 
Bird calls attention to it in 
order to orchestrate a break 
to freedom from this well-
beaten, suffocating path.
Ultimately, 
Andrew 
Bird is not the artist of the 
inattentive or indifferent. 
As a songwriter, he demands 
total and devoted attention. 
Bird makes every word count 
and forces the audience to 
pay attention to even the 
smallest details of his songs 
in order to capture the 
entirety of his multi leveled 
creations. Andrew Bird and 
his latest album is a prime 
example of how music can 
be an active, rather than 
passive, experience for artist 
and listener.

Andrew Bird finds his
voice in a masterpiece

ALBUM REVIEW
MUSIC NOTEBOOK

SAMANTHA CANTIE
Daily Arts Writer

ASIF BECHER
Daily Arts Writer

MADELEINE GANNON
Daily Arts Writer

My Finest Work

Andrew Bird

Virgin EMI

