ARTS
6
Thursday, August 1, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
“You can never publish my
love,” Rogue Wave chants, in the
song that the title of this series
riffs on. Maybe that’s true, and
we can never quite account for
our love on paper or in print, but
we sure can try. That’s what this
series is devoted to: publishing
our love. Us, the Arts section of
The Michigan Daily, talking about
artists, some of the people we love
the most. Perhaps these are futile
approximations of love for the
poet who told us we deserve to be
heard, the director who changed
the way we see the world, the
singer we see as an old friend. But
who ever said futile can’t still be
beautiful?
In 2013, an obscure, post-met-
al outfit released its sophomore
record, the psychedelic, blaring-
ly tender Sunbather. The album’s
artwork is simple and unforget-
table: a pleasant salmon gradient
overlaid with white, stripped-to-
the-bone minimal lettering that
spells out the title in three rows
and three columns. That is to say,
Sunbather’s aesthetic is far from
what most would consider metal.
And yet appearances are deceiv-
ing.
If Sunbather proved anything,
it’s that the primal shrieks, the
thundering blast beats and the
dissonant tremolo guitar chords
of black metal can push into the
fringes of mainstream when
packaged in just the right way.
Indeed, when Sunbather first
broke through with a devout cult
of listeners, it wasn’t treated like
a metal album, but rather like
something amorphous, the lost
mutant child of post-punk and
dream pop that had suddenly
found its way back into the popu-
lar consciousness.
Only years afterward did I
discover the album myself. Like
many other metalheads who
propelled the album’s second
wave of influence, I heard about
Sunbather through the esoteric
term “blackgaze.” “Blackgaze”
was what people were calling
this new stylized aggression, a
hybrid of black metal and shoe-
gaze. I was immediately drawn
into the sheer craft of the music,
vividly aware that mention of the
album’s style as its own subgenre
were more than valid. It didn’t
take me long to reckon with and
accept the fact that a band called
Deafheaven was profoundly and
irreversibly
shaping
modern
metal.
I return time and time to
Deafheaven because I discover
something new on every listen, a
quality that I find bitterly rare in
experimental metal. Deafheav-
en’s ability to construct hazy,
intensely
evolving
emotional
journeys through a framework
of traditional metal expanded
my entire notion of what metal
could be. That’s not to say that
modern metal lacks emotion,
or that it must even harness the
very intimate to succeed. What
Deafheaven offers that other
current metal doesn’t is a range
of feelings, some happy, some
sad, most fleeting and impos-
sible to qualify.
There’s something alchemical
about the way that Deafheaven
captures and builds upon the
ephemeral. The band’s songwrit-
ing process is so singular in its
vision, so personally embrac-
ing, that certain playthroughs
of their albums embed them-
selves starkly in my memories.
I can recall with remarkable
ease everything I was doing and
everything I was feeling dur-
ing one particular time I heard
their third album New Bermuda.
A specific afternoon after an
algebra exam, a specific walk
on a Florida beach. I, like many
others, have similar experiences
with albums important to me in
my most formative and impres-
sionable years. But only a hand-
ful of artists can clearly capture
the relationship between a mem-
ory and the moment.
Deafheaven’s staying power
ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
Chance the Rapper’s debut studio
album The Big Day is inescapably,
embarrassingly bad. It seems that
in the three years between Coloring
Book and The Big Day, Chance has
lost some fundamental aspect of his
musical identity.
The first three songs present the
only strong sequence of ideas to be
found across the bloated, 22-track
project. “All Day Long” is a high-
energy opener, nothing to write
home about but fun enough to lis-
ten to. “Do You Remember” is a
highlight, thanks in large part to an
elegant if slightly mawkish hook,
courtesy of Ben Gibbard. “Eternal”
is a solid, groovy effort featuring a
creative and soul-
ful
verse
from
Smino.
After that, it all
goes off the rails. If
you’ve ever listened
to “Womp Womp”
by
Valee
and
thought to yourself,
“Man, I really like this song, but I
wish it had more lines about trying
to go to sleep and also was a whole
lot worse in every way,” then I high-
ly recommend you check out “Hot
Shower.” If you’re like me, and this
does not sound like something you
would enjoy, the track would best be
skipped. Dababy provides some last-
second life support with an excellent
verse, but it’s not enough to redeem
this subpar, plagiaristic misfire.
The next three songs (“We Go
High,” “I Got You (Always and For-
ever)” and “Roo”) are good efforts
and worth giving a listen if you’re
attuned to Chance’s overarching
vision. Everything after that ranges
from forgettable to embarrass-
ing. There are so many confound-
ing decisions Chance made here.
Why are there almost five minutes
worth of skits? Why did the mad-
dening “Found a Good One (Single
No More)” merit inclusion on an
already-bloated tracklist? Why is he
letting every single guest who isn’t
named MadeinTYO or Francis Star-
lite outshine him? Why did he think
“Hey there, lovely sister / Won’t you
come home to your mister? / I’ve
got plans to hug and kiss ya” (“Let’s
Go On The Run”) was a good line? I
don’t have the answers.
“The Big Day,” the title track, the
centerpiece of the album’s narrative,
is an incoherent mess. The lyrics are
laughable: “The only way to survive
is to go crazy” sounds like some-
thing Heath Ledger’s Joker would
say. The beat is slow and plodding,
creating a sense of claustropho-
bic anxiety that I’m certain wasn’t
intended to be conveyed on a happy
song about his wedding day. Fran-
cis Starlite’s vocals are terrible. The
jarring screaming halfway through
the track, aside from sounding sus-
piciously similar to Frank Ocean’s
outro on “Biking,” is a complete and
utter failure that takes the listener
out of whatever semblance of an
emotional atmosphere that has been
created up to that point.
As a fan of most
of Chance’s previ-
ous work, I find
The Big Day to be
bitterly disappoint-
ing. This is the type
of album that you
release after you’ve
surrounded your-
self with yes men and spent your
free time shooting Kit-Kat commer-
cials and riffing with the Wendy’s
Twitter account. This is the type of
album you make when you’re resting
on your laurels.
It seems as though Chance has
lost the ability to make his life seem
compelling. Where did his sense
of humor go? His willingness to be
weird and experimental seems to
now be limited to trying on the styl-
ings of other artists, mere artistic
mimesis. The vibrancy of 10 Day,
Acid Rap and Coloring Book are
nowhere to be found, and it’s hard to
believe that the person responsible
for those three projects was involved
with The Big Day at all.
Listening to The Big Day produc-
es in me the same uneasy feeling as
watching a commercial, the sense
that I am being somehow tricked.
It is plastic soul, the worst effort
Chance has put out to date, and (puts
fingers to temples) I predict it will be
nominated for several Grammys.
I fear that this record is so tedious
and self-absorbed as to be indicative
of the end of Chance’s artistic rel-
evance. I hope he proves me wrong.
Chance’s album
is just plastic soul
JONAH MENDELSON
Daily Arts Writer
ALBUM REVIEW
Read more at michigandaily.com
The Big Day
Chance the Rapper
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