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Arts
Monday, February 10, 2020 — 5A
I didn’t know who Mac
Miller was until he died.
I knew he dated Ariana
Grande. I knew he wrote a song
about that one guy who hosted
NBC’s
“The
Apprentice.”
I
knew I didn’t like Blue Slide
Park when it came out. These
were my thoughts as I read
“RIP MAC MILLER” from a
slab of ply-wood leaning on
a frat house on my way back
from a football game on Sept.
8, 2018. I didn’t have many
more thoughts until later that
night when I first listened to
Swimming. I sat in my dorm
room with the lights off and
played it once all the way
though, sorting its highlights
like “Ladders” and “What’s
the Use” into various playlists.
I hadn’t listened to an album
that captured depression quite
like it, and I wished I could’ve
heard it at least once before
Mac’s passing.
The wounded album trailed
Mac’s
shattered
interiority
following a career grounded
in a seemingly high-spirited,
humorous
demeanor.
His
struggle with drug addiction
and depression weren’t new
topics as much as they were
pillars to a notoriously fun
discography. Take “Rain” from
Faces: “That’s a flex though,
cover up the issues that I kept
close / Sober I can’t deal, I’m in
the corner with my head low /
Runnin’ from my shadow, never
ending chase / Ease the pain
and the battle that’s within
me / Sniff the same shit that
got Whitney, the high heel
depression / My temple feel
the metal comin’ out the Smith
& Wesson, bang / Say a prayer,
leave my brains on the tile
floor.” Swimming amalgamated
these themes and the emotions
that easily hovered under the
radar and slipped past the
media’s gaze. Whereas The
Divine Feminine is an ode to love
and togetherness, Swimming
is
lonesome.
Swimming
is
stopping to catch your breath
after a long jog. Mac struggled
to stay afloat amid a livelihood
accustomed to the support of
others. Whereas sonic soulmate
Ariana
Grande
seemingly
moved on romantically with
ease, Mac was emotionally and
mentally stagnant.
Circles is an album designed
in the same mindset of its
sister Swimming. Envisioned
alongside
another
concept
album that never came to
fruition (Oblivion), Circles was
left nearly complete when Mac
died. The early versions of the
album were worked through
Mac and producer Jon Brion,
who took the initiative of
finishing the album following
Mac’s
passing.
“This
is
a
complicated process that has
no right answer. No clear
path,” Mac’s family wrote in
an Instagram post. “We simply
know that it was important to
Malcolm for the world to hear
it.”
Circles was developed to loop
back to Swimming. This idea
harkens back to Swimming’s
closer “So it Goes,” an eerie
reference to death in Kurt
Vonnegut’s
“Slaughterhouse-
Five.” “My god, it go on and
on,” he raps. “Just like a circle,
I go back to where I’m from.”
Both albums are centered on
depression
and
its
ensuing
anxieties, but Circles is a lot
more optimistic, more willing
to wait out the storm. On
Swimming track “Come Back
to Earth,” Mac raps “I just
need a way out of my head /
I’ll do anything for a way out
of my head.” Circles responds
to
this
predicament
across
multiple songs. He is “spring
cleaning” in plucked single
“Good News” and recognizes
that “(it) is getting pretty
cluttered” and hard to “clean
up” the mess he’s made in his
head on “Complicated.” Mac
tries to clean up a lot on Circles,
whether it be his head or his
public image.
Circles depicts Mac as lonely,
but still alongside others. He
isn’t afraid to question his
capacity for love on “Woods.”
Produced
by
longtime
collaborator
E.
Dan,
Mac
questions his own emotions
following a rift in a relationship.
“Do I, do I, do I love?,” he sings
in the chorus. Mac does rap on
songs like “Hand Me Downs”
but the aura is loose and
contemplative. With Baro as
the album’s only feature in the
chorus, Mac envisions a future
alongside a family: “You remind
me / Shit, I need to stay in line
/ You damn well are a great
design,” Baro croons. “You,
despite being an only child /
Say you need more of a family
‘round / Let’s turn these genes
into hand me downs.”
Thematically and sonically,
Circles
is
his
most
naked
release.
The
album
never
breaks
out
into
traditional
rap with the exception of
“Hands,” a song about negative
self-destructive behaviors in
the sound and style of Faces.
Despite Jon Brion finishing
much of the production for
Circles, the aesthetic is very
Mac.
The
lo-fi
beats
and
soulful, jazzy glimmers gather
the same energy as Mac’s
Space Migration Tour with
The Internet in 2013. Circles is
iridescent. With a hypnotic grip
on elements from Mac’s ever-
evolving music style, it grooves
as easily as a traditional Mac
album.
Whether it be Mac laying
in his grave in his final music
video “Self Care,” the eerily
fated prediction to “join the
27 club” on “God Speed” or his
posting “So it Goes” as his last
Instagram story, the writing
on
the
wall
and
fatalistic
undertones grip you. This is
not the case with Circles. Mac’s
exhaustion coats every lyric
but with a subtle, gentle hope.
Whereas Swimming considers
living in the long term, Circles
takes itself one day at a time. I
think a lot back to the moment
in “Complicated,” where Mac
sings, “‘Fore I start to think
about the future / First, can
I please get through a day?” a
reprise to the first verse: “Some
people say they want to live
forever / That’s way too long,
I’ll just get through today.”
Circles was a surreal release
for me; I never expected myself
to
know
the
anticipation
of waiting for a Mac Miller
album.
The
circumstances
were completely different, but
Circles looped me back to my
discovery of Swimming. I knew
a lot more about Mac this time
around, and I knew that this
album would resonate with me,
something I hadn’t expected
from
Swimming.
Circles,
as
anguished and tired as it is, is a
comfortably ephemeral closing
to Mac Miller and the legacy he
left behind. This album takes
us back to the heartbreak of
Swimming; we’ll never know
how Mac would’ve progressed
beyond this point. The one
thing I do know is that there
couldn’t have been a better
musical send off to Mac than an
album that epilogues his spirit
and style the way this one does.
Swimming in ‘Circles’: On
Mac ’s posthumous release
ALBUM REVIEW
ALBUM REVIEW
DIANA YASSIN
Daily Arts Writer
WARNER RECORDS
Circles
Mac Miller
Warner Records
“Briarpatch”
opens
on
a
99-degree
morning
in
San
Bonifacio, Texas. A landlady, who
is also a police detective, exits her
apartment to inquire about the rent
from a standoffish upstairs tenant.
She gets into her cruiser to leave for
work and is promptly killed in a car-
bomb explosion.
From its opening moments,
“Briarpatch” presents itself as a
trope-subverting,
expectation-
destroying amendment to the neo-
noir genre. Following the disturbing
explosion sequence, “Briarpatch”
introduces its reluctant heroine
Allegra Dill (Rosario Dawson,
“Luke Cage”) who returns to the
small Texas town to mourn her
sister, the murdered detective.
Allegra sweeps into San Bonifacio, a
chaotic town plagued by corruption
and a recent zoo animal breakout,
with a cool exterior entirely at odds
with the heat and confusion of her
surroundings.
As
Allegra
digs
into
the
circumstances of her sister’s killing,
her career as a private investigator
for
a
Senate
sub-committee
interferes. She is soon asked by her
employers to depose an old friend
Jake Spivey (Jay R. Ferguson, “Mad
Men”) about his role in an organized
crime network surrounding an
elusive fugitive, Clyde Brattle.
Allegra, compelled by her work
and complicated feelings for her late
sister, has no choice but to immerse
herself back into the town she left
12 years earlier, after a mysterious
accident that killed her parents.
Soon injured in another car-bomb
explosion, Allegra and her stoic
composure begin to unravel as she
delves deeper into San Bonifacio’s
bizarre world of lies and corruption.
“Briarpatch,”
based
off
the
novel of the same name, seeks to
separate itself from other works of
the neo-noir genre and present a
unique response to tired tropes in
TV crime drama. Dawson shines
as the guarded and self-assured
Allegra. Confident and unflinching,
her character takes the “hardened
private investigator” role to new
territory, especially with her status
as a woman of color in a mainly
white, Southern town.
In one scene, Allegra interrogates
a
police
beat
reporter
(John
Aylward, “ER”) over dinner at the
local press club. Upon seeing her
charm the Latino wait staff, he
remarks, “How come they treat you
like white man?” By acknowledging
the racist past of its setting and
genre, “Briarpatch” again subverts
viewer expectations and skillfully
places power back into Allegra’s
hands as a competent and talented
protagonist.
Part Southern Gothic and part
surreal, the visuals of “Briarpatch”
reinforce its impact on audiences.
The show weaves the worlds of the
ultra-wealthy and impoverished
seamlessly into its backdrop to
create an unmistakably American
setting. With the added pressures
of political and economic factors,
Allegra’s journey to avenge her
sister works as a representation
of how difficult navigating the
country’s moral climate can be.
“Briarpatch”
knows
exactly
what it is and what it wants to be.
With this self-awareness in mind,
the show near-flawlessly resurrects
the noir genre with equals parts
grit and levity. The solid cast and
compelling writing hold up an
already intriguing premise and
bring life to a world simultaneously
real and fantastical. If the beginning
of “Briarpatch” is any indication,
the show will continue to captivate
its audience with its gorgeous
conspiracies and abundance of zoo
animals.
‘Briarpatch’ is a breath of
fresh air for neo-noir genre
USA NETWORK
ANYA SOLLER
Daily Arts Writer
Briarpatch
Season 1, Episodes 1
and 2
USA Network
Thursdays @ 10 p.m.
TV REVIEW
TV REVIEW
“West of Arkham the hills rise
wild,” begins H.P. Lovecraft’s
famous short story “Color Out of
Space” and the 2020 film adaptation
of the same name. The movie starts
off with the story’s entrancing
opening passage in which its main
character, a water surveyor, details
a particularly creepy woodland
in Massachusetts. The new film
sets this monologue to shots of a
dark, nearly otherworldly forest
which seems almost normal, if
not for certain patches of strange
trees and some deep shadows.
This scene captures what makes
Lovecraft’s work so haunting. His
terrors typically remain unseen,
but are always felt, lurking in the
dark.
The movie departs from all
of this pretty quickly. From the
second scene on, “Color Out of
Space” becomes a mess. Essentially,
the story is this: a meteorite lands
on a family’s farm and carries with
it a life force that mutates the flora
and fauna around it and grows like
a cancer. While this sounds like an
intriguing premise (and makes for
an amazing short story), the movie
wastes it. Highbrow, literary sci-fi
horror is shredded into B-movie
carnage and camp. Basically, it’s
as if the team behind “The Room”
made “Annihilation.” The dialogue
is atrocious, the characters and
their decisions are nonsensical
and, along with some terrible CGI,
frequently threaten to derail the
entire movie.
Yet Nicholas Cage (“Mandy”),
who plays the father, does what he
does best and raises this seemingly
destined-to-be forgotten schlock to
another sublime level. He gives the
most Nicholas Cage performance
possible, filling every one of his
scenes with (often unintentional)
hilarity. His wild-eyed, screaming,
lisping, expletive-hurling, alpaca-
milking persona is so extreme that
it will live in one’s brain long after
the plot and all its details have
disappeared.
Sadly, however, when Cage isn’t
on screen, no one else can carry
his manic weight. The scenes
without Nicholas Cage in “Color
Out of Space” mostly drag, with
characters exchanging abysmal
dialogue and making exaggerated
facial expressions to match. The
screenwriters also must have
determined that a modern audience
would have difficulty following the
relatively simple story, so multiple
characters spell out what exactly
is
happening
multiple
times,
draining the situation of any kind
of Lovecraftian mystery. Even if
certain images still retain some
shocking, cosmic horror, they’re
frequently deflated by overused
CGI and bad acting. When a
hippie character played by Tommy
Chong (“Cheech and Chong”) tells
another character in painstaking
detail what the alien inside the
meteorite is doing, one can almost
feel Lovecraft turning in his grave.
Yet somehow, again and again,
Nicholas Cage shows up to remind
us to keep watching. His insanity
frequently and impossibly eclipses
itself in each progressive scene.
He seems to be in an entirely
different film, though what kind
is impossible to tell. His personas
change on a dime, and he flits
between
conserative
farmer,
drunken dope, psycho murderer
and tragic hero over the course
of the story. If anything’s from
an alien planet, it’s definitely this
deranged shapeshifter.
“Color Out of Space” would be a
great movie for late on Halloween
night, after a party or two, when
one can just sit back, half asleep,
to watch the wild, blood-soaked
hilarity. It’s pretty terrible but,
thanks to Nicholas Cage’s heroic
efforts, pretty terrible in all the
best ways.
Color Out of
Space
The State Theatre
RJLE Films
ANDREW WARRICK
Daily Arts Writer
Cage enlivens otherwise
drab ‘Color Out of Space’
RJLE FILMS
FILM REVIEW