6— Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Arts
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By Paul Coulter
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/22/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
10/22/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2019
ACROSS
1 Barbecue
glowers
6 Priestly robes
10 Cobblers’ tools
14 Neighborhood
map on a city
map, e.g.
15 Java neighbor
16 Former Iranian
ruler
17 Classroom text
19 Deep sleep
20 Represent
21 Like a bike
23 Goes on to say
24 Summer on the
Riviera
25 MLB Network
analyst Martinez
28 Twinkling in the
night sky
34 On bed rest, say
36 Lupino of “High
Sierra”
37 Bird’s crop
38 Colorado native
39 Relief from the
daily grind
42 “__ Am”: Alicia
Keys album
43 Screen material
45 Sinus doc
46 Growing weary
48 Office spot with a
coffee pot
51 Landlord’s
income
52 Tell tall tales
53 Field of study
55 Pays some of
59 Closed in on
62 Cut __: dance, in
old slang
63 Start of a sports
season, and
what each half of
17-, 28-, 39- and
48-Across can
have
66 Hightail it
67 Trait carrier
68 Mozart’s “Così
fan __”
69 Spill the beans
70 Taiwanese PC
maker
71 Most common roll
of two dice
DOWN
1 Prefix with
gender
2 How software
was once sold
3 Queens tennis
stadium
4 Johnny’s “The
Big Bang Theory”
role
5 Was
conspicuous
6 Convent leader
7 Language of
Southeast Asia
8 Hard punch
9 Many a Punjabi
10 One leading
a Spartan
lifestyle
11 Healthy bread
type
12 Like a weak
excuse
13 Roe source
18 Inc., in the U.K.
22 Slender
aquarium
swimmer
25 __ bob: vertical
measuring tool
26 Diner
27 Gas at a truck
stop
29 Connect with
30 Big deal
31 Whitewater ride
32 “Who __?!”: “Join
the club!”
33 Small sticks
35 Jetty
40 6, on a cellphone
keypad
41 Insects with a
painful sting
44 Stylist’s supply
47 Debate again
49 Hawaii’s
Mauna __
50 Style
54 Camping gear
brand
55 Inane
56 Mystery writer
Gardner
57 Tranquil exercise
58 On __: without a
contract
60 1999 Ron
Howard film
61 Go out with
64 WSW’s opposite
65 Japanese money
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Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. They hit it off,
hold hands into the sunset, get married, have
kids — the whole shebang. It’s a tale that’s been
recycled throughout all of time, and while it’s not
entirely realistic, it doesn’t mean there’s no hope
for us. As society has slowly started to realize, love
takes shape in infinite forms, and “Modern Love”
presents this to us in a beautiful, realistic, painful
and sometimes convoluted way. The eight-episode
anthology was inspired by a column in The New
York Times under the same name, and portrays
love stories in a light that’s true to life. Like all
great anthologies, some episodes will stand out
among the rest and leave you thinking for days,
and some will simply disappoint. This season has
a strong start and finish with not much of value in
between, but a great part of the anthology format
is that you can skip episodes without missing a
beat.
Under a common theme of love, each episode
features nuances of affection rarely seen on the
big screen: The platonic love between a woman
and her doorman, the ones that got away, two gay
men and their adopted daughter and a bipolar
woman and herself, to name a few. These episodes
were some of the most impressive ones from the
series, and their departures from the romance
genre are just enough to provide a fresh new
take, but not far enough to be cold and detached.
They hit you just as hard as any cheesy love story
would, but force you to think about love in a more
realistic sense.
The episode featuring Anne Hathaway (“The
Hustle”), in which a woman reconciles herself
with the presence of her own mental illness,
marks the end of a great start to the season. After
that, the season takes a weird dip downward
into the territory of stale acting and unrelatable
plotlines. The worst and frankly creepiest
episode of the season is about a young girl named
Maddy (Julia Garner, “Dirty John”) with serious
daddy issues. She attaches herself to Peter (Shea
Whigham, “Joker”), a higher-up at her workplace
who seems to be around 30 years older than her.
Long story short, she begins to see him as a father
figure, he thinks of her differently, mixed signals
are exchanged and things get very, very weird.
Maddy’s story makes you wonder whether the
creators thought it was supposed to be watchable.
On the bright side, the good stuff picks back up in
the last two episodes of the season.
If you’re a crier, you’ll surely shed tears at the
best parts of the series. It crushes you, gives you
hope, rinses and repeats. With the diversity of
topics the stories cover, anyone should be able
to find an episode they vibe with the most and,
who knows, maybe it’ll be the daddy issues one.
The anthology format makes the show a lot more
watchable and digestible, and we can only hope
that the show will get picked up for a second
season so we can continue feeling all the things.
The antithesis of Hollywood
romance is ‘Modern Love’
SOPHIA YOON
Daily Arts Writer
AMAZON VIDEO
TV REVIEW
When Zac Brown Band released Welcome Home
in 2017, it sounded as though they were home
to stay. Songs like “Roots” and “Family Table”
celebrated Brown’s family-man image and firmly
planted the band back in the country soundscape in
which they started. But this September, the band’s
latest album, The Owl, found them on a different
planet. The Owl is Frankenstein’s monster: Dance-
pop beat drops, questionable lyrics, rock and
country all mashed together haphazardly. It’s not
like there weren’t any warning signs beforehand —
Zac explicitly made the leap in 2016 by starting the
EDM trio Sir Rosevelt. It’s just that Welcome Home
seemed to promise that these interests would
be kept separate. The Owl blends them together.
Unsurprisingly, fans were disappointed. But what
was most shocking was when Zac Brown doubled
down on his new sound by dropping a solo pop
album, The Controversy, a week later. Then fans
were worried.
The band’s album titles have always been
markers of their artistic development. Their first
album, The Foundation, poured the foundation
for Zac Brown Band’s wheelhouse with hits
like “Chicken Fried” and “Toes.” These songs
established the band in its corner of country music
filled with strings, salt water and sincerity. Jekyll +
Hyde (2015) embodied two personas — one at the
beach, one suited for the club, both still country.
This album is sonically closest to The Owl, the only
difference on the former is that Brown doesn’t try
to be both Jekyll and Hyde at the same time.
The Owl is an equally revealing title. Like Zac
Brown’s interest in the EDM world, owls aren’t
seen as much as they are understood to always
be around, living in the shadows. Additionally,
owls are nocturnal. So it’s fitting that The Owl
would come out during a period of darkness for
Zac Brown a year after he and his wife announced
they were separating. The first song, “The Woods,”
invites the listener into that darkness and a side
of the band they’ve never seen before, while
acknowledging that a longtime fan might decline
the invitation.
“What makes me smile / might make you cry”
he shrugs over an auto-tuned and fiddle-heavy
pop track. While “The Woods” is bearable, other
tracks, like “OMW,” are not. “When you see that
OMW / OMW / meaning I’m on my way, yeah /
hell yeah / I’m on my way, yeah,” Brown croons
like a dad rushing to hook up with someone half his
age. Most of the songs on The Owl fall somewhere
in between. For example, “Already on Fire” has a
believable Western film groove and catchy hook
that a deep, dark, out-of-nowhere autotuned
bridge derails.
The title of Brown’s solo album, The Controversy,
speaks for itself. It’s clear that Brown knew what
he was about to incite when he dropped it. Labelled
pop instead of country, (unlike The Owl), the
album still feels too busy with EDM, hip hop, R&B
and rock meshed together. But the music itself isn’t
really what I have a problem with, it’s the lyrics.
In “Swayze,” Brown brags that, “every time I get
a new bitch, I need a new bitch.” It’s so gross that
it’s comical. In “This Far,” the song questions how
he became so successful — something listeners
will be wondering throughout the album, Brown
sings, “No C-G / I’m still I” so solemnly I can’t help
but smile. The only joy I get from listening to The
Controversy is from recognizing how ridiculous it
is.
Every artist changes their sound. Whether it’s
a switch in genre or producers, a musician’s urge
to try something new is as natural as a fan’s initial
discomfort in hearing their favorite band sound
different. But I don’t feel uncomfortable listening
to The Owl or even The Controversy despite how
cringe-worthy both can be. I just feel sad. It’s
tempting to write an obituary for the Zac Brown
Band, but the situation is worse than that. No-fun
attempts to push genre boundaries like Jekyll +
Hyde, The Owl and The Controversy sound like
cries for help. It’s assumed that when musicians go
through difficult times, they make their best music.
But what happens when an artist already made
meaningful music about their happy everyday life,
and then has their world flipped upside down? In
Zac Brown’s case, all that was deep turns shallow.
Still, there are two songs to return to out of all
of this. “Someone That I Used to Know” pulls off
EDM-country and offers some explanation for
the band’s new direction. “When you keep on
losing / with the path you’re choosing / then it’s
time to let go / of someone that I used to know,”
Brown advises. Unfortunately, that someone
seems to be the “cold beer on a Friday night /
pair of jeans that fit just right” beanie-wearing
Zac Brown fans grew to love. The other song is
The Owl’s closer “Leaving Love Behind.” Entirely
acoustic with gorgeous harmonies, this song is so
good it’s frustrating. It’s a reminder of what the
Zac Brown Band is capable when Zac Brown is in
the right headspace. It also provides context for
the rest of the album by showing what got him in
the wrong headspace — his heartbreak at the end
of his marriage.
“Everything we lose / will be a gift in time” he
sings, and I agree. But it’s obvious this time hasn’t
come yet for Zac Brown.
Who hurt Zac Brown?
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
Mozart’s “Requiem.” Mahler’s “5th Symphony.” Glass’s
“Glassworks.” Davis’s “Kind of Blue.” All of these pieces of
music have proved to be seminal works that have proved to
influence the shape of music yet to come. It’s common to see
them performed live by different symphonies, chamber groups
or jazz combos. However, despite being the spark that began the
ambient movement of music, Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music For
Airports is rarely heard outside of a prerecorded context. The
Digital Music Ensemble hopes to change that.
Stephen Rush, the director of the the University of Michigan’s
Digital Music Ensemble (DME), compares Eno’s Music For
Airports to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. “It’s not that hard to
see live,” Rush said of the Symphony in an interview with The
Daily. “But has anyone seen Music for Airports done? This is
a piece of music that founded a genre. And we have not seen it
live? That’s crazy!”
Although it wasn’t his first dive into ambient music, Music for
Airports is certainly Eno’s most popular and influential work.
In the winter of 1975, right after he released his critically-
acclaimed art rock album, Another Green World, Eno took a
sharp turn in the opposite direction with his first ambient
album, Discreet Music. This album proved to be a teaser for
what was to come three years later with Ambient 1: Music for
Airports.
After waiting for a delayed flight in a European airport, Eno
was inspired by the soundscape he heard.
“Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of
listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must
be as ignorable as it is interesting,” Eno said. Eno accomplished
this through a series of tape loops — tape that has been spliced
together to create a seemingly infinite loop that continuously
repeats itself. Eno originally recorded the piece by phasing in
and out tape loops of different lengths, using a variety of sounds
from instruments like piano, voice and even synthesizer.
Just like the original piece, the Digital Music Ensemble
plans on recreating the album through tape. Although Rush
wrote that the group plans on recreating the piece as closely
as possible, he also chose to make the piece more of their own.
“I asked all of the students to write their own loops to place
or play over the original music,” Rush wrote. “People that love
the original may be disappointed because they will hear it (the
original piece), but they will also hear what our students have
placed over the top. The main thing that is different, of course,
is that this is a physical installation … not an LP record.”
The official title of the group’s performance is “Pond Music
XVII: Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.” In the past, the ensemble
has done a variety of performances on the pond by the Earl V.
Moore School of Music, each serving as more of an installation
than a performance. While the pond doesn’t directly play a role
in making the music, Rush says that it plays an integral role in
the installation.
“The pond provides a beautiful natural landscape. It is also a
neutral gathering space for music. No one has any expectations
of what music would come from a pond space,” Rush wrote.
“It also messes with the audiences notion of time. When is the
piece over? When does it start? Most of it really doesn’t matter
with 40 hours of installation time. Just sit and listen, or walk by
and notice.” The group spent time installing airplane propellers
on the pond in order, spinning and mimicking the tape loops in
order to visually accompany the music.
The Digital Music Ensemble will present four performances
of “Pond Music XVII: Brian Eno’s Music for Airports” on Oct.
24 through 27, starting at noon on the Pond near the Earl V.
Moore School of Music. Admission is free, and the public is
welcome to come and go as they please.
DME to channel Eno’s ‘Airports’
COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW
If you’re a crier,
you’ll surely shed
tears at the best
parts of the series.
It crushes you,
gives you hope,
rinses and repeats.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Pond Music XVII:
Brian Eno’s Music for
Airports
Digital Music Ensemble
October 24th-27th
Free
Modern Love
Season One
Amazon Prime
Streaming Now
KATIE BEEKMAN
Daily Arts Writer
RYAN COX
Daily Arts Writer