The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts Tuesday, February 4, 2020 — 5 When listening to her song “Christmas Lights,” you might think Ingrid Michaelson is describing the sadness of missing a loved one during the holidays; however, she’s actually narrating the thoughts of Joyce Byers, the mother of a missing boy in another dimension from the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” “You’re not here, but you’re here / I can still hear you call / Like a faraway bird trapped inside of the wall” Michaelson croons, recounting the scenes when Byers is able to communicate with her son via the Christmas lights hanging around her house. While she’s built her career on her honesty and vulnerability, Michaelson took a new approach on her latest album Stranger Songs, dedicating the entirety of the album to the characters of “Stranger Things.” I had the opportunity to talk with Michaelson on Wednesday before watching her perform live at Folk Festival to discuss her new album and her upcoming show. “Basically all the songs on the record are from the point of view of a few of the characters,” Michaelson said. “It’s essentially an assignment. There’s this song, you have to tell this story. For me, the structure of it is really different and just getting into a groove of writing about what you’re thinking or writing what you’re feeling or writing about what you went through, it sort of feels like you have homework. But within that structure I find great comfort for whatever reason, maybe because I’ve never really written like that before. It allows me to somehow be more creative because I have this structure, if that makes any sense. I’ve been really loving it and enjoying it. Applying it to pop writing has just been really cool and fun and rewarding.” In her bio for Stranger Songs, Michaelson describes how she felt as though she was writing too much from the “brain and mind and soul of Ingrid Michaelson,” so Stranger Songs was a way for her to plug her own experiences into a pre-existing story. “Even though you’re taking inspiration from something else, there are still songs on the record that are very personal to me because the ideas are universal,” Michaelson said. “We all suffer heartbreak, we all suffer loss, we all have love in our life in some capacity, so even though they are pre-existing stories, my own voice is definitely there. My own vulnerability and my own part are definitely in the songs in Stranger Songs.” The album pairs well with her other big project as the composer for the musical adaptation of “The Notebook.” “In a musical you’re writing music that’s from the point of view of other characters of another story, so you get to tell a story through songs, which is really amazing,” Michaelson noted. “And then that’s where, although I didn’t realize this until after the fact, Stranger Songs came from because I was doing a very similar thing only in the realm of pop music where I’m taking pre-existing stories and characters and I’m funneling them through my lense.” As a teaser to the opening of “The Notebook,” Michaelson performed an unreleased song from the show at the festival and encouraged audience members to see it live at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in September. Michaelson was one of six acts performing at the first night of the 43rd Annual Folk Festival, a two- day event that raises money for The Ark, a local non- profit concert venue in Ann Arbor. Sporting black jeans and a t-shirt, Michaelson walked on stage with her long-time bandmate Allie Moss. “It’s going to be very acoustic, just how I started touring years ago,” Michaelson said before the show. “It was just Allie and me in a minivan. So we’re going to do everything acoustic, stripped down. She’s one of my favorite people to sing with. Harmonizing with her is [great]. She’s so amazingly good and she blends so well.” Sitting down with Ingrid Michaelson, AA Folkfest MUSIC REVIEW KAITLYN FOX Daily Arts Writer The second night of The Ark’s 43rd Ann Arbor Folk Festival began with the lilting sounds of guitar, banjo and lap steel, as it often does. There is nothing quite like sitting in Hill Auditorium during the festival, every seat filled with excited patrons laughing, crying and clapping throughout four hours of music that The Ark, a local music venue, puts on each year. To begin this year’s second night, emcee Willy Porter roused the crowd for the first act, a bluegrass and roots- rock group called Cold Tone Harvest. As audience members filed in through the auditorium’s gilded doors, they were met with the beautiful, yet gritty voice of the band’s lead vocalist, over a soundscape of rhythmic slide guitar and bouncing drums. Though the group played only three songs during their act, they set the tone for the rest of the night with a warm sense of intimacy. After Cold Tone Harvest, Tulsa, Oklahoma. native John Moreland took the stage with his musical partner and guitarist John Calvin Abney, both of whom are monumental talents in their own right. Moreland is the kind of songwriter that makes you forget everything that’s happening around you, his deep voice wielding the kind of gravitas that only comes from years of careful practice. As he played several songs from his upcoming album, Abney’s trills and riffs added a brilliant dose of treble to the songwriter’s emotive lyrics and cadenced guitar strumming. Moreland is a big guy, but his stage presence dwarfs any physical attributes he might have. It is hard to fill an auditorium of Hill’s size with one person’s voice alone, but he achieved it easily, moving the audience with each line of his roots- rock stylings. If soul is what sets folk music apart from other genres, Moreland is its poster boy. His performance reminds us of why large events like the Ann Arbor Folk Festival are critical: They highlight lesser-known but immensely talented artists with time on the big stage. Moreland is a tough act to follow under any circumstance, but Nashville songwriter and acclaimed guitarist Molly Tuttle is one of the only people who could match his intensity and talent. The first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year award, Tuttle’s flatpicking skills are incredible to watch and even more of a gift to hear. Paired with the singer’s clear and stirring voice, her songs call to mind the kind of timeless music folk is built on. At the peak of one chorus, Tuttle’s precision both with the guitar and her own vocals left the audience in awe, with the typical whoops of support and enjoyment quieted as each note echoed through the auditorium. She approaches music like a surgeon would a body. In many ways, her live performance is a spectacle of both heartfelt commitment and incredible technical prowess. Following the theme of female empowerment and skill, Tuttle’s talent was matched by the next act, R&B legend Bettye Lavette. The Detroit singer began her career in the early days of Motown, and decades later, Lavette has gotten back on the horse to show audiences her unforgettable voice and inimitable soul once again. Her performance was full of laughter and wit, with Lavette’s raspy voice carrying each song with jokes and false exits. Near the end of the set, she admitted to the audience that she was out of breath, proceeded to dance off the stage in her black velvet jumpsuit and came back a minute later with the fervor and stage presence only a veteran of the industry can embody. For a woman of advanced age, Lavette’s spark is still as bright as it ever was, her raw talent and gregarious personality pulling the audience in with every word that came out of her painted-red mouth. The festival could have easily ended with Lavette’s magnetic performance, and yet, the two headliners hadn’t even played yet. As Lavette danced through the stage doors once more, this time not returning, cleverly-named North Carolina duo Mandolin Orange prepared for a set full of grace and emotional clarity. Ann Arbor Folkfest Day 2 is full of magnetic talent MUSIC REVIEW CLARA SCOTT Daily Arts Writer Not many things in life are truly black or white. There will always be more unanswered questions than answered, and the ethics behind our choices are often what make these questions nearly impossible to solve. Despite this headache that morality drags us into, many would agree that part of our responsibility on Earth is, to some extent, recognize that working to solve moral dilemmas is far better than ignoring them altogether. “Bojack Horseman” knows this and, through its entire six- season run, has never been afraid to shout into the void to try and get the message across that “the truth is none of it matters and the truth is it all matters tremendously.” In this eight-episode conclusion to the show’s final season, everything is the same and everything is different. The first half of the final season left us in a transition period in each character’s life and with a cliffhanger that hinted at the fateful culmination of Bojack’s (Will Arnett, “Riviera”) mistakes. The second half leans into the anxiety that was built up surrounding Bojack’s rocky attempt to be a better, sober person and capitalizes on the fear but logical expectation he’ll relapse into the “old Bojack” that everyone’s so resentful of. In the last season in particular, the show begs the question of whether people should be allowed to move on or should have to remain plagued by the mistakes of their past. Bojack, caught up in the wake of the #MeToo movement, finally faces legal and societal backlash as the secrets surrounding Sarah Lynn’s (Kristen Schaal, “Bob’s Burgers”) death air to the public. Bojack, like all flawed characters, causes internal conflict for the show’s viewers and at times forces them to choose whether they stay hopeful that Bojack will improve, or hold him to the same cancel culture standard most powerful Hollywood men have been held to in the past few years. It makes us wonder whether people can really change, or if they’re bound to the chains of their toxicity. And if people really can change, to what extent should we hold them accountable for the actions of their old self? A distinctive characteristic of the show is its consistently unforgettable penultimate episodes. Always pivotal, always poignant and always action-packed, these episodes have been a marker for how meticulous the creators can be and how human this fantasy-like show really is. Each character, no matter how profusely they deny it, is a product of their past. In between the puns, the movie references and the absurd escapades, the show is filled with existentialism and profound one-liners that make “The Good Place” seem like a children’s show. This final season is different in that it intentionally includes all the ethical discussions the show kept relatively subliminal in prior seasons. In its penultimate episode, characters — which I’ll leave undisclosed to avoid exposing crucial plot points — are literally having these discussions around the dinner table. In a game called “Best Part/Worst Part,” the characters debate sacrifice, happiness and the best and worst parts of their lives. It emulated what the fans have been doing over the past six years — analyzing, discussing, interpreting. Even though I know all good things must come to an end, I can’t help but pine for more. This last season is the most precise, carefully-crafted the series has ever been, and yet there’s a part of me that knows it wasn’t their peak. Thankfully, the creators tied all the necessary loose ends to wrap up the show in exactly the way it was supposed to be, and we can only hope television doesn’t peak with this series. Good things are fleeting and their fleeting nature is often what makes them so special. And like Diane (Alison Brie, “Horse Girl”) says, some things “were never meant to be in your life forever.” ‘Bojack Horseman’ season six reveals vital truths TV REVIEW SOPHIA YOON Daily TV Editor Bojack Horseman Season Six Netflix Read more at MichiganDaily.com There’s a certain type of person you’ve probably encountered in grade school. Perhaps you were this person yourself. This was the person who didn’t just like to read — reading was part of their identity. The one who was on a first name basis with the librarian; the one who finished all the Harry Potter books by middle school; the one who always had a book on their desk and it was always thicker than a dictionary; the one who, when the Scholastic Book Fair came to school, arrived with two crisp twenty dollar bills and put more thought into their purchases than most would into buying a car. You get the idea. Chances are, this person doesn’t read so much anymore. Maybe they haven’t found the time or just haven’t gotten around to making that trip to the library, but of course, deep down they know that they just don’t enjoy reading as much as they used to. This experience is encapsulated by Erin Morgenstern’s “The Starless Sea.” The book is an amalgamation of interconnected narratives experienced by the main character, Zachary. It starts with him finding a book in a college library that tells of an event from his own life that he’s never told anyone about. What follows is a fairy- tale-like adventure where Zachary is taken from story to story, about everything from pirates to princesses to painters. In what is essentially a story about stories, he rides this rollercoaster of fantastical narratives, guided by the eccentric characters he meets along the way. My initial impulse was to hate this book. The plot is all over the place and often confusing, which is not surprising given that it tries to incorporate so many simultaneous subplots. The main plot is frequently interrupted with short stories whose relevance is sometimes unclear, even by the end. There is, for example, a three page story about a man who collects keys. Though keys are a prominent symbol in the book, the book never revisits the key collector. In this instance the story serves to clarify the meaning of the symbol, but doesn’t advance the plot. These ambiguous interludes are stretched out across nearly five-hundred pages, making it nearly impossible to keep track of relevant characters and plot points. This unfortunately also produces many underdeveloped side characters, like the key collector, who disappear as effortlessly as they’re introduced. One could overlook this if the main characters were complex and memorable enough, but even Zachary seems to just be along for the ride rather than an active participant in the action. He meanders between whimsical tales without any real purpose aside from a desire to continue the story. “The Starless Sea” has all the warning signs of a bad book. However, I still found myself eager to continue, to find out about what subsequent wondrous adventure Morgenstern had in store for me. This is a book one can enjoy if one lets go of the need to make sense of it and gives in to its elegant chaos. The beautiful prose works to construct incredibly rich and imaginative worlds. For instance, the shores of the Starless Sea, the place the book is named after, houses entrances to the “labyrinth” of stories that Zachary traverses. This physical location is described in a manner that mirrors the interconnectedness of literature as a whole, a major theme of the book. Morgenstern can build this intricate image and just as easily transition to a chapter about a dinner party or an intimate conversation between lovers. “The Starless Sea” is, in short, a spectacle. When reading it, one feels a sense of nostalgia for a time when reading was for its own sake. The sheer imagination of Morgenstern’s stories combined with the sense of familiarity brought by the incorporation of classic literary motifs take you back to a time when you sat in bed late at night, effortlessly engrossed in book after book. Reading “The Starless Sea” is a bittersweet experience. It evokes the feelings associated with reading a truly great book without being a great book itself. It summons nostalgia for the childlike sense of wonder that many once felt when reading. Yet, like all forms of nostalgia, the feeling is fleeting. It’s like a diet Coke or a decaf coffee. You know exactly what it’s supposed to be and, therefore, exactly what you don’t have. Readers of “The Starless Sea” are similarly left wanting the real thing. Its value is in the evocation of the experience of reading without expectation, of reading simply to read. ‘The Starless Sea’ is the perfect book for book lovers BOOKS REVIEW SEJJAD ALKHALBY Daily Arts Writer Read more at MichiganDaily.com This is a book that can be enjoyed if its reader lets go of the need to make sense of it and gives in to its elegant chaos NETFLIX PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE