The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, November 11, 2020 — 11

MUSIC REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW

‘Clockface’: Costello’s aim is the same
‘Real Life’ is 
raw, complex

Though the title track of 

Elvis Costello’s latest album 
describes him in a battle 
against 
time, 
the 
English 

songwriter definitely has a 
habit for creating timeless 
listening 
experiences. 
In 

a career spanning over 40 
years, Costello has earned 
the reputation of being a 
musical chameleon. While in 
his earlier years he cemented 
himself as a pioneering punk 
rock rebel, his more recent 
work 
is 
characterized 
by 

experimentation in a variety of 
styles from jazz to bluegrass. 
Regardless 
of 
the 
musical 

form he takes on, Costello has 
always stayed consistent with 
his sharp, witty vocals and off-
beat persona.

Costello’s 
latest 
album, 

Hey 
Clockface, 
represents 

a continuation of his sonic 
exploration. 
Rather 
than 

delivering 
high 
energy, 

angsty punk rock tracks, Hey 
Clockface 
continues 
upon 

many of the ideas introduced 
in Costello’s earlier album, 
Look Now. The songs in Hey 
Clockface have a much slower 
tempo than what is typically 
found in Costello’s discography, 
allowing the tracks to relish 
in their rich instrumentation 

and production. If Costello has 
been known to deliver some 
burning shots of tequila, Hey 
Clockface serves the audience 
a full glass of fine wine. 

Three of Hey Clockface’s 

tracks 
were 
recorded 
in 

Helsinki, while the rest were 
recorded in Paris along with 
a full band led by longtime 
Costello 
collaborator, 
Steve 

Nieve. The tracks recorded in 
Helsinki have an urgent, lo-fi 
sound. Costello’s voice sounds 
pent up as if he struggles 
to 
deliver 
the 
lines. 
“No 

Flag,” which was recorded in 
Helsinki, is full of cynical lyrics 
which 
match 
exceptionally 

well with the feel of the song. 
In contrast, the songs recorded 
in Paris are slower, jazzier and 
more subtle. These songs range 
from “I Do (Zula’s Song),” a 
slow jazz ballad with excellent 
woodwind and brass lines to 
“The Last Confession of Vivian 
Whip,” a sweet, slow piano tune 
which tells an interesting story 
through Costello’s emblematic 
songwriting mastery.

Listening to Costello sing 

on much slower tracks allows 
the listener to appreciate the 
subtle textures of Costello’s 
voice. His delivery of the 
bluesy political anthem “We 
Are All Cowards Now” is raspy 
and pleading as the character 
laments for a time before 
society became soft and vain. 

The powerful spoken word on 
“Revolution #49” and “Radio 
is Everything” demonstrate 
Costello’s 
impressive 
tonal 

range and ability to create 
interesting moods within his 
track lists.

Though the individual tracks 

on Hey Clockface demonstrate 
Costello’s mastery of the craft 
of songwriting, the overall 
production of the album is 
severely 
underwhelming. 

There are many thematic and 
musical links between the 
tracks on this album — such 
as the recurring theme of 
communication incongruities 
within relationships — but 
Costello’s album suffers from 
a severe lack of cohesion. 
The track list ricochets from 
lighthearted tunes with sweet 
lyrics to more serious songs 
interwoven 
with 
complex 

melodramatic 
textures. 

Though both songs are great 
in their own right, “No Flag’s” 
punchy, overdriven production 
doesn’t sound all too good 
on the same side of the richly 
produced and indulgent “I Do”. 
The result of this mismatch 
makes the album feel like a 
collection of b-sides left on the 
cutting room floor at multiple 
points in Costello’s career, 
stitched up and packaged for 
release. 

The 
quality 
also 
varies 

jarringly between tracks on the 

album. Aside from the obvious 
tonal divide between the songs 
recorded in Paris and Helsinki, 
the difference in production 
quality from track to track is 
noticeable. In one extreme 
example, the vocals on “Radio 
is 
Everything” 
sound 
half 

baked, almost as if Costello’s 
voice was recorded through 
a laptop microphone. I even 
listened to this track through 
multiple 
audio 
sources 
to 

make sure the issue wasn’t just 
with me and it sounded just 
as uncomfortable no matter 
what I listened to it on. The 
unfortunate result of this lack 
of quality control is that the 
impact of the more brilliant 
moments and beautiful lyrics 
is 
reduced 
by 
distracting 

production.

Though it’s a bit of a 

mess, it’s a beautiful mess 
nonetheless. 
Hey 
Clockface 

proves what we already know 
about Costello: He’s a master at 
creating beautiful songs with 
compelling, intricate lyrics. 
Though Hey Clockface may 
not cut out to stand out among 
the many titans of Costello’s 
discography, it is certainly an 
album worth paying attention 
to, especially if you are looking 
to learn from a true master.

Daily 
Arts 
Contributor 

Kai Bartol can be reached at 
kbartol@umich.edu.

DIGITAL CULTURE NOTEBOOK
On TikTok and Penelope Scott

For as long as the modern music 

industry has been around, the 
idea of scenes has been critical to 
understanding how the artform 
evolves. Geographic regions and 
even individual cities are often 
tied to a certain subgenre, from the 
east coast vs. west coast era of hip-
hop to the incredibly influential 
Chicago house scene. It’s no 
surprise, then, that in the digital 
era, new music scenes are popping 
up on different websites and apps. 
The mid-late 2010s were, after all, 
dominated by the lo-fi trap sounds 
of “SoundCloud rap.” 

Despite SoundCloud’s work in 

establishing the internet as a viable 
place to develop new innovative 
sounds, few people saw TikTok’s 
rise to dominance over the music 
industry coming. TikTok is a social 
media app, primarily aimed at Gen 
Z kids, that succeeded Musical.
ly as the number one source for 
short videos of people dancing. 
It is wildly successful, ranking 
alongside giants like Twitter and 
Instagram as one of the most 
popular social media platforms. 
But don’t let TikTok’s surface 
appearance as an inconsequential 
trend platform, like Vine before 
it, trick you. TikTok is much more 
than just dancing videos, and 
has clearly made an impact in 
everything from politics (TikTok 
was where thousands of teens 
organized to reserve seats at a high 
profile Trump rally, contributing 
to the embarrassingly low turnout) 
to the music industry itself (“Old 
Town Road,” one of the biggest 
pop songs of all time, started as a 
TikTok song). 

TikTok is scarily good at 

personalizing content for the user. 
The almighty algorithm is nearly 
mythical in the way it is revered 
by users, allowing anyone who 
regularly uses the platform to end 
up in incredibly specific niche 
areas. It is within these many sides 
of TikTok that indie musicians can 
thrive. It’s hard to overstate how 
much one viral TikTok can change 
a musician’s career. “Vices,” a 
single by Mothica, hit number two 
on the iTunes chart off nothing 
but TikTok hype, materializing 
a music career for Mothica out 
of nowhere. Previously obscure 
Swedish indie musician Girl In 
Red’s lo-fi sapphic love songs 
have become so well known in 
the LGBTQ+ corner of the app 
that “listening to Girl In Red” has 
become synonymous with being a 
lesbian. 

After 
seeing 
the 
influence 

TikTok has had over the music 
industry, many may ask questions 
like “Does TikTok music have a 

specific sound, like SoundCloud 
before it?”, “What is it like for 
those who make it big off of a 
minute-long viral video?” and of 
course, “How much staying power 
do these musicians really have?”

Well, ask no longer, because I 

sat down over Zoom with college 
student, amateur musician and 
overnight success story Penelope 
Scott to get her take on the 
TikTok effect. Scott gained rapid 
popularity on TikTok under the 
username @worsethanithot after 
her song Born to Run went viral.

This interview has been edited 

for clarity and concision.

The Michigan Daily: My first 

question for you is: what was your 
original motivation to join TikTok? 
When did you join it? Did you join 
it intending to post music content 
on there, or did you just join it as 
a social media and end up doing 
music later on? 

Penelope Scott: I definitely did 

not join it expecting to post music. 
I joined it mostly to see content. I 
thought the jokes were funny and 
I wanted to see the memes. And I 
also wanted to see what my friends 
were doing. And some of them 
were on tiktok. So I thought that 
was a good thing to be in touch 
with … I posted a lot of videos of 
my friends, and then I posted a 
few of music. And when it started 
to become a music account, I took 
all the videos of people that maybe 
didn’t want to be part of my brand 
off of it and kind of transformed 
it into that account. But that’s 
definitely not how it started. 

TMD: So what was your 

original motivation to start posting 
music related videos? What was 
the first thing you posted? Why’d 
you post it? 

PS: Oh, I think it must have been 

some of the homework projects 
I was making for my music class 
at the time ... I go to a school that 
has some music equipment. And 
when COVID happened a lot of 
the students had to go online. We 
had to switch to a free software 
that everyone could use. And so we 
used LMMS 1.2.1 And it’s like just 
the free open source software. I 
like it a lot. And I have a lot of other 
software that I use to edit audio 
that I used to edit my voice. But 
all of the beats on the new, like the 
backdrops on the new songs are in 
LMMS. 

TMD: Really? 
PS: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s what a 

lot of the first ones were because I 
was doing homework regularly so 
I would turn in like a piece. And 
then I would extend that into a 
song and put it on the Internet. 

TMD: Yeah, I will definitely 

get into that when we talk about 
the album. So generally, can you 
give me an overview, a summary 

of how your career has changed or 
even come to be if you didn’t really 
have one before? Like, how has in 
the past ... like you said, you started 
during COVID, so in the past 
couple months of making music 
and putting it on tiktok, how has 
your career changed?

PS: I guess it’s just been a 

crazy trajectory up of people 
knowing about the songs that I 
make. And I guess it would have 
started — so Sweet Hibiscus Tea, 
the video, blew up in late May. 
And Born to Run blew up around 
the same time. But it travels very 
differently online because the 
audio got banned. So that’s a lot 
more people spreading it without 
it being attached to me and finding 
out later like where it comes from. 
And then sweet hibiscus tea is 
pretty straightforward. So from 
that point on, it’s just been like 
this rapid growth of numbers and 
the amount of people that I’m 
interacting with. I used to be able 
to answer everybody’s comments 
and questions and kind of be 
very personal with people. And 
now it takes a lot longer to get to 
the bottom of the DMs. So that’s 
definitely a big change. Yeah. It’s 
been a pretty steady, very stable 
upward trend on Spotify, which I 
think is a good sign. 

TMD: So to provide some 

perspective for people who are 
not as familiar with online culture 
things, who know the more 
traditional music industry ... have 
you seen any success with that? 
Has anybody, like, tried to reach 
out to you for like record deals or 
stuff? Have you gotten any more 
traditional music career things? 

PS: Yeah. So I have had a few 

record labels reach out to me. 
Not necessarily ... I think, I think 
making a deal is more ... That’s a 
little in the past at this point. They 
kind of just want to trade contact 
information and keep you kind of 
in their orbit so that if you have a 
request, you can make it. And then 
you’ll settle on a deal. I haven’t 
settled on a deal with a record label 
because I use a distributor called 
Distro Kid, which works for me. 
And they just put all the things that 
I make onto Spotify and Apple, and 
they do it for about thirty dollars a 
year, which is pretty cool. 

TMD: So that’s how your 

career changed. How has like ... 
And obviously, you don’t need to 
go near too many personal details 
if you don’t want to. How has 
your life changed? How has your 
personal life been affected by this 
sudden growth? 

PS: Well, it’s weird because 

because it’s so online, my day to 
day life isn’t that much different. 
I’m still going to school, still 
studying politics, still doing all 
the normal things I was going to 

do. But it is, like, a significant part 
of my day, checking social media. 
And when I was putting out the 
album, that would take hours out 
of the day to just kind of set up my 
little recording area in the room, 
knock out a song, edit it. And it’s 
also interesting to have people who 
have not seen me or talk to me in a 
while realize that they recognized 
my voice on one of the songs that 
they’ve heard somewhere else and 
kind of like circle back and be like, 
Hey, are you doing music now? 
And I’m like, I am. And it’s weird 
that you know that. But thank you.

TMD: So, you’ve obviously 

been in the music world or at least 
aware of what’s going on in music 
for a few years, even if you’ve not 
been super successful and active 
in making music that whole time. 
How do you think the music 
industry itself has changed the 
past couple years with things like 
TikTok and especially recently 
with COVID, which you’ll have 
more experience with that ... 

PS: Well, I definitely think that 

it’s a lot more artist friendly and a 
lot more user friendly. I think artist 
friendly platforms like Bandcamp 
are a big deal. The idea that things 
are pretty straightforward and 
you can kind of just do this on the 
side and not have it take up a lot 
of your day. And then if it starts 
to pick up, then you can choose to 
allocate more time. But I also think 
that TikTok especially is a really 
interesting one, because it kind of 
paves the way for other platforms 
that might link audio. And like, you 
can trace a meme back through a 
song. That’s really interesting to 
me. I think it has a huge impact 
on tying various pieces of art that 
relate to one song together. And 
that’s pretty cool. It’s definitely 
helped me get in touch with people 
who are, in the future, going to do 
my album art, because someone 
does a drawing or something to 
your song and then you have the 
ability to reach out to them and say, 
hey, this is my song, and you drew 
a picture to it and I like it. We can 
work together. So very connected. 

TMD: 
That 
entire 
scene 

of TikTok music, of all these 
individual songs and sometimes 
artists in general just making 
huge success. I know there are 
some stylistic trends that seem 
to be more popular on TikTok. 
And it makes me think about a 
phenomenon of the mid to late 
last decade of SoundCloud and 
SoundCloud rap and that scene. 
Do you think that would be a fair 
comparison between TikTok and 
SoundCloud? 

KAI BARTOL
For The Daily

CLAIRE ARP

For The Daily

SEJJAD ALKHALBY

Daily Arts Writer

Something no one tells you 

about being an adult is that, 
at the end of the day, no one is 
going to make you do anything. 
No one is going to make you 
get a job, make you pay your 
bills, make you eat healthy or 
just generally make you get 
your life together — at least 
not in the way your parents 
made you clean your room 
when you were a kid. Sure, 
you might have friends and 
family who will be genuinely 
concerned when something 
seems to be going wrong, 
but as an adult, you’ll rarely 
ever be forced to do anything 
about it. It’s ultimately up to 
you whether you pay any mind 
to other people’s concerns 
about you. This, in a word, is 
responsibility.

Brandon 
Taylor’s 
debut 

novel “Real Life” explores 
the 
tension 
between 

responsibility 
and 
the 

psychological 
dysfunction 

resulting 
from 
childhood 

trauma. The story is told 
from 
the 
perspective 
of 

Wallace, a gay Black man 
from 
Alabama 
who 
has 

recently 
begun 
his 
PhD 

program at a predominately 
white Midwestern university. 
Though 
one 
may 
imagine 

plenty of dramatic tension 
arising from this situation 
alone, it plays a far more subtle 
role than anticipated. Broad 
social 
commentary 
takes 

a backseat to the minutiae 
of 
Wallace’s 
subjective 

experiences. 
Rarely 
does 

Wallace’s race or sexuality 
play an explicit role in his 
interactions 
with 
people, 

remaining an easily ignorable 
shadow for most of the novel, 
only 
to 
periodically 
cut 

through with a force backed 
by the entirety of America’s 
injustice against Black and 
queer people.

Conflict arises as Wallace 

attempts to navigate a number 
of delicate social situations. 
Challenging situations with 
his friends and colleagues 
force Wallace to confront 
many of his neuroses. One of 
these conflicts is with Dana, 
a new member of Wallace’s 
PhD program who he suspects 
sabotaged one of his lab 
experiments 
in 
retaliation 

for what she perceived as 
Wallace talking down to her; 
this culminates in a heated 
verbal 
argument. 
Wallace 

is an introverted, conflict-
averse 
person, 
so 
dealing 

with this situation causes him 
emotional 
stress. 
Another 

one of these tensions, which 
looms over the entire story, 
is his friends’ reactions to 
the recent death of his father. 
Taylor suggests that Wallace 
has a tumultuous relationship 
with his parents, so he doesn’t 
go to the funeral or even think 
much about the death, which 
occurred a few weeks prior 
to the events of the novel. 
Wallace tells just one of his 
friends about it, and only 
because he was somewhat 
forced to. Hours later, his 
entire friend group knows, 
but Wallace doesn’t know how 
to handle their sympathy. He 
doesn’t feel particularly sad 
about it, and doesn’t really 

know how to feel about it at 
all. So when his friends offer 
their condolences, expecting 
him to be sad, he has trouble 
reacting in a way that would 
ease their discomfort. He 
finds himself managing their 
emotions more than being 
supported by them. 

These are just a few of the 

social 
challenges 
Wallace 

faces that prompt him to 
confront 
his 
own 
inner 

conflicts. Being the focus of a 
character-driven novel, these 
inner conflicts are Taylor’s 
most captivating plot device. 
Wallace’s 
primary 
drive 

is to avoid thinking about 
the traumatic events in his 
past, particularly a sexual 
assault 
and 
the 
resultant 

poor relationship with his 
family. 
Wallace 
dodges 

these memories by focusing 
all 
his 
attention 
on 
his 

graduate work and avoiding 
situations where he needs to 
open up and feel vulnerable. 
Consequently, 
Wallace’s 

inner monologue fills most 
of the space of the book, but 
as he is thrust into various 
interpersonal conflicts, his 
efforts to isolate himself from 
others become increasingly 
fraught. Despite the lack of 
an eventful plot, the book 
doesn’t lack drama. Wallace is 
a particularly keen observer 
of both himself and the people 
around him, which makes for 
some detailed narration. We 
watch him pickup on all sorts 
of emotional subtleties while 
simultaneously blocking out 
negative 
emotions 
related 

to his past trauma. With the 

story taking place over just 
a weekend, the novel has a 
slow pace, but the incredibly 
rich 
narration 
keeps 
the 

reader engaged throughout. 
Readers who skim Wallace’s 
long 
inner 
monologues 

will 
inevitably 
miss 
an 

important 
observation, 
a 

poignant emotional moment 
or a dramatic shift in tone. 
There are few lines that feel 
superfluous, making the slow 
pacing worthwhile.

“Real Life” is a powerful 

character 
study. 
Taylor 

perceptively depicts a layered, 
complex persona in Wallace. 
The story is gut-wrenching 
and moving, giving the reader 
much to think about as they 
watch Wallace grow. “Real 
Life” is impressive in its 
own right, but even more so 
considering that it’s Taylor’s 
first novel, making me eager 
to see what else he might have 
in store.

Daily Arts Writer Sejjad 

Alkhalby can be reached at 
salkhalb@umich.edu.

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

“Real Life” 
is a powerful 

character 

study. Taylor 
perceptively 

depicts a layered, 
complex persona 

in Wallace.

