Wednesday, February 16, 2022 — 5
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
There
aren’t
many
bands
that can successfully combine
a traditional rock instrumenta-
tion with saxophone, violin and
acoustic piano, but Black Coun-
try, New Road have made a name
for themselves precisely by forg-
ing those elements into a truly
one-of-a-kind sound. Last year,
the band teased their potential
with their debut album For the
First Time, a chaotic and noisy
work that combined sprawl-
ing compositions, mesmerizing
instrumentals and gritty vocal
performances into a mind-bend-
ing, futuristic rock piece. It’s
difficult for any band to follow
up on an album as over-the-top
as their previous one, but with
their latest release, Ants from Up
There, Black Country, New Road
diversifies their sound without
compromising what makes them
one of the most fresh and unique
rock bands today.
The
instrumental
prowess
that has always been central to
Black Country, New Road’s iden-
tity is once again on full display
on Ants from Up There, even
as the band plays with differ-
ent musical textures across the
album’s 10 tracks. The noisiness
that defined their debut record
is still present in some songs
on Ants, such as “Haldern” and
“Basketball Shoes,” which fea-
ture all of the band members
playing at once. However, the
band also finds new ways of mak-
ing a powerful sound without
simply relying on thick instru-
mentation.
The
nine-minute
song “Snow Globes” has one of
the most intense climaxes on the
entire album thanks to Charlie
Wayne’s ridiculous drumming,
which swells up to eventually
drown out the delicate repeating
musical ideas in the saxophone,
piano and violin.
Just as the band has evolved
their ability to be loud and hec-
tic, they also show songwriting
growth. There are songs where
this is obvious, like “Mark’s
Theme,”
a
beautiful
instru-
mental featuring an emotion-
al saxophone solo and piano
accompaniment. But most of the
time, the revamped songwriting
is more subtle. By avoiding the
abrasive sounds they previously
embraced, the band is able to
create pleasant, accessible songs
that are still engaging. One
example of this is “The Place
Where He Inserted the Blade,”
a seven-minute track influenced
by late-career Bob Dylan that
has more than enough variety
to stay engaging — but not too
much where that it undermines
the song’s strong sense of har-
monic direction.
For as many new directions
Black Country, New Road take
that pay off, the album’s biggest
weakness is that it’s a little too
safe most of the time, particu-
larly compared to their ground-
breaking debut. The klezmer
melodies and irregular rhythms
the band mastered on For the
First Time are teased on the
album’s very short intro track,
but after that, they are sel-
dom present as the band tends
towards standard Western har-
monies and rhythmic patterns.
Many fans will probably prefer
this album for that reason, but
even if For the First Time was
uncomfortable to listen to at
times, its moments of irregular-
ity served as points of interest
that feel missing on new good-
but-not-great tracks like “Chaos
Space Marine” and “Good Will
Hunting.” The album is gener-
ally at its best when it’s pushing
musical boundaries, even just
on the short, dissonant outro to
“Haldern,” which serves as an
audible reminder of the cost of
the band’s new, safer style.
Ants from Up There is a bit-
tersweet album: Just days before
it was released, Black Country,
New Road vocalist Isaac Wood
announced his departure from
the group. Wood’s distinctive
vocals and lyricism were inte-
gral to the band’s innovative
sound; replacing his impact will
be impossible. With Wood’s
departure, Ants from Up There
serves as the end of an era for
the band, a brief time that will
be remembered fondly thanks
to this album and its predeces-
sor. Whatever the future holds
for the individual musicians of
Black Country, New Road, this
album shows that each of them is
oozing with musical talent, and
their futures are bright.
‘Ants from Up There’ pleasantly concludes the first era of Black Country, New Road
In an ideal world, ‘The Fallout’ wouldn’t exist.
In our world, it has to.
Process over product: A
preview of the student-run
production of ‘Dogfight’
Content warning: gun violence and
school shootings
I still remember the exact date:
March 16, 2019, when my friends and I
were studying in the Hatcher Graduate
Library. It was a Saturday, the day before
St. Patrick’s Day. I remember this because
on our way there we’d passed fraternity
houses filled with students celebrating
“St. Fratty’s Day.”
We’d talked about leaving the library
and getting something to eat at South
Quad, but any thoughts of tendies or soft
serve left our minds as we started see-
ing the messages sent to org group chats:
There was an active shooter in Mason
Hall.
I had gotten the first text, but I waited
to tell everyone else about it until they
had also gotten one (something that they
relentlessly tease me about now). But
the truth is that I was in a strange state
of denial, a clouded sense that it couldn’t
be real, or maybe a sliver of desire that
if I pretended I hadn’t seen the text, it
wouldn’t be true. But soon enough, there
were more texts from more sources, and
the problem became something I couldn’t
ignore.
We all packed up our stuff. We were
on the fourth floor, so we started climb-
ing stairs — up to the eighth floor, since
we figured that the higher up we were,
the safer we would be. The eighth floor is
small, mostly offices and a hallway, with
two entrances. My friend had a thick belt
that we used to keep one door locked, and
we latched the other one with the power
duo of a bolt and a laptop charger tied
around a bar sticking out of the frame.
Other people in the building had the
same idea. People started joining us pret-
ty soon after we’d arrived. I saw two girls
I knew from an org we were in; I never
talked to them about it later. In total, there
were probably 25-30 people crammed
into that little hallway, leaning against
the walls, staring out the windows.
We listened to the police scanner,
heard them speculate about suspects
and apprehend them. We gasped as they
heard them talk about a suspect heading
towards the UGLi. (I later heard stories
about people holed up in the basement of
the UGLi who were hiding behind tables,
listening to the police scanner and think-
ing that that was the moment they were
going to die.) Some kid tried to pick the
lock to get into one of the offices in the
hopes that we could hide in there, where
it was less exposed. People around me
were calling their parents, their boy-
friends and other loved ones, staying on
the line while we waited.
I’ll spare you the tension, because the
truth was that there was no shooter. A
group of people had popped balloons in
a Mason classroom that, muffled and
distant, sounded like gunshots. But we
had no way of knowing that. We were up
in that hallway for about 45 minutes, lis-
tening to the scanner, waiting for some-
thing to happen. We heard officers on the
scanner checking every floor of Hatcher
before they finally made their way up
to us. They knocked on the door, stared
blankly at our makeshift laptop charger-
defensive measure and escorted us out.
In a post-Columbine world, grade
schools all have lockdown drills — safety-
based plans for handling an active shoot-
er or suspicious person or any other kind
of active threat. I have distinct memories
of sitting stock-still in my classroom in
elementary school, with the lights off and
a couple dozen students clustered in a
shadowy corner, away from the windows.
The worst part was when the principal
and other admin would come by and rat-
tle the doorknobs, checking to make sure
they’d been locked. Still, there was always
a gasp in the room, and I would lock eyes
with some of my classmates long enough
to know that we were all thinking the
same thing: that maybe it was an intruder,
and that the drill was no longer a drill but
had morphed into reality. It was terrify-
ing to think that you were next.
Throughout my thirteen years in the
public school system, there were moments
that brushed against the idea of a real
school shooting. Group reading time in
first grade turned into an impromptu
lockdown when a man a few streets over
began threatening to kill himself with his
firearm. There was a football game my
freshman year of high school when our
principal came on the loudspeaker before
the game had started to announce that
a nearby high school had experienced a
school shooting earlier that day. When
I was a senior, my high school had three
bomb or gun threats within two weeks,
all hoaxes, but overwhelming enough
that the district canceled high school
classes for a day in the hopes that every-
thing would reset.
But for the most part, school shootings
were something that happened Some-
where Else. It was the tragic thing you
saw on the news, the thing that made
people gasp and then say, “This time
things will change.” Every high school’s
name has an effect, but it’s an effect that
seems to fade with time, until we forget.
It always felt like everything went back to
normal immediately after the moment of
silence had ended — not because it wasn’t
tragic, but because it was routine. These
were not my schools, not in my home-
towns; the victims were not my friends,
or my neighbors, or my teachers. We, the
mostly unaffected, could move on as if
nothing had changed.
The week after the “shooting” on cam-
pus, I found myself getting into strange
conversations with people about what
had happened. I started to realize that my
experience was somewhat unique com-
pared to the wider university community:
It was a Saturday, and there were maybe a
thousand people in buildings around the
Diag. To most people, they could forget
about the incident as soon as the weekend
passed; for me, it stuck with me for weeks
at the front of my mind. “Hi, I’m Kari
Anderson, I’m a freshman, and my fun
fact is that I sort of thought I was going to
die in Hatcher last month.”
Because things are different when
you’re the one who is affected. Even if the
“shooting” itself was fake, the fear was
absolutely real. That hour I spent on the
top floor of Hatcher, sitting on the hall-
way floor and listening to the police scan-
ner, was a blur of emotion, but the main
one I remember was uncertainty — both
“what’s going to happen?” and “what am
I supposed to do now?” My friends and I,
and the rest of the people hiding on the
top floor of Hatcher, were escorted down
the elevator by officers holding the largest
guns I’ve ever seen in my life. We walked
out of Hatcher that day and headed off
campus to a friend’s apartment. Later
that day, I went back to my dorm and ate
cake that my RA gave me. We stood in the
tiny kitchen eating cake and talking about
how balloons could cause so much dam-
age.
Because that was the thing I kept get-
ting stuck on. The shots were never veri-
fied by DPSS. No one sent out any security
alerts. All of the communication was done
through students frantically texting
friends and org group chats. The word
traveled about an active shooter in Mason
Hall, and so the students who were on
campus that day, the post-Columbine
generation, acted accordingly. None of
us — the students on campus, the people
attending the vigil on the Diag that day,
the officers making their way through
every single building on campus — ques-
tioned whether it was real.
25 years ago, school shootings weren’t
even a thought. Now they’re an expecta-
tion.
It’s been almost three years since that
moment. Most of the students at Michi-
gan don’t remember that it happened,
and even fewer who were actually there
are still on campus. People don’t men-
tion it often, if at all. Enough time has
passed that we can joke about it. But for
me, there’s still a part of my Michigan
experience that will always be stuck with
the time that I sat in Hatcher for 45 min-
utes and contemplated my own mortality
while a team of law enforcement officers
scoured every single building on the Diag.
In all of my close calls, it was the closest
I’ve ever come to a school shooting. And it
wasn’t even real. We walked away from
that moment shaken up, alive and deeply
confused. Theoretically, it was just about
the best case scenario. But I can’t help
but think of the kind of place we’re living
in. We all instantly jumped to the worst
possible conclusions because that’s life in
the United States: the only place where
school shootings are the expectation.
That’s where “The Fallout” comes in
— a 2021 South by Southwest Film Festi-
val entry that was just given widespread
streaming access on HBO Max. The film
tackles the issue of school shootings
head-on with unflinching clarity. Many
critics are focusing on “The Fallout” as a
definitive Gen Z movie — not just because
of the way that the characters speak and
interact with cell phones but because of
how they see the world. We are one of
the first generations where school shoot-
ings are not an unthinkable scenario but a
potentially real threat. Kids in the United
States grow up going to school with metal
detectors, security guards, lockdown
drills and the ever-present hope that their
high school won’t be the next one trend-
ing in the news.
***
The beginning of “The Fallout” is a
normal school day. Vada (Jenna Ortega,
“Scream”), the main character, brushes
her teeth, squabbles with her sister Ame-
lia (Lumi Pollack, feature debut), and
drives to school with her best friend Nick
(Will Ropp, “The Way Back”). Vada hap-
pens to be in the bathroom with Mia Reed
(Maddie Ziegler, “The Book of Henry”),
a near stranger who she goes to school
with. Then they hear shots, then screams,
and they rush to hide in the stall.
The entire shooting is over before the
10-minute-mark of the film, shown only
through what Vada and Mia hear in the
bathroom. The rest of the film is devoted
to what happens once the coast is clear —
because what do you do next when things
aren’t life-or-death anymore, but you’re
still stuck in the trauma of thinking you
were going to die?
Based on the 1991 film of the
same name, “Dogfight,” the 2012
musical, was an instant success.
Originating as an Off-Broadway
production, the heart-wrenching
show has now been performed
across the world and translated
into various languages. Although
Music, Theatre & Dance alumni
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul craft-
ed the music and lyrics for “Dog-
fight,” it has never been performed
at the University of Michigan until
now.
“Dogfight” follows the story of
Corporal Eddie Birdlace, a Marine
who has just one free night before
being deployed to Southeast Asia.
To pass the time, Eddie and his
best friends, Boland and Bern-
stein, compete to see who can find
the “ugliest” woman to bring to a
party (a.k.a dogfight) where she
will be judged on her appearance.
When Eddie meets Rose Fenny,
however, his perspective on this
degrading game — and on love —
shifts. In an in-person interview
with The Michigan Daily, musical
director Andrew Gerace, a Music,
Theatre & Dance and LSA senior,
called “Dogfight” “a story of love
and loss and terrible error and
redemption.”
Even those who know the show
“will leave the theatre surprised”
agreed Gerace and Director Jules
Garber, a Music, Theatre & Dance
and LSA senior.
“If you just know the music, it
sounds like it will be a happy story.
But when you add the text it is a lot
heavier,” said Gerace.
On why “Dogfight” was selected
to be performed now, Gerace, who
is majoring in political science,
explained that “The Vietnam War
and the conf lict in Afghanistan
had similar lenses. I saw compar-
ison photos of the U.S. military
leaving Vietnam next to the U.S.
military leaving Afghanistan. For
me, it felt like an appropriate time
to reconsider how we view war,
conf lict and the U.S. military.”
In
an
effort
to
respect
“Dogfight”’s heavy material and
develop an effective piece, the
producers employed a mantra of
“process over product.” The cre-
ative team worked to approach the
show with a DEI-focused and com-
munity-care approach — serving
as an example for all students who
work with heavy artistic material.
Working with a DEI Coordinator
helped actors come to “language
agreements”
about
problematic
lines their characters say to ensure
comfort on the actors’ behalf. As
stated by Gerace, “Dogfight’’’s
text is inherently f lawed … there
are things not acceptable in 2022
that were acceptable in 2012.”
Producer Allie Kench, an Engi-
neering
graduate
and
current
Business Graduate student, noted
that “It has been a priority to focus
on the process at the forefront and
letting the product follow. A pro-
cess that has all the elements like
DEI work, like intimacy coordina-
tion, making sure that every team
member feels supported that will
ultimately create a great process.”
Kench also shared that as the
show has “scenes and moments of
assault. I saw the production as an
opportunity to create a larger dia-
logue on assault.” Accordingly, she
helped to bring a Sexual Assault
Prevention and Awareness Center
(SAPAC) workshop called “Michi-
gan Men” on harmful masculin-
ity to the cast and team. SAPAC
agreed to modify the workshop
so that the team could talk about
“both (the cast and teams’) expe-
riences
(regarding
masculinity)
at Michigan … but also the char-
acters, the content of the show
and the story. It was twofold” said
Kench.
When asked what differentiates
this version of “Dogfight” from
others, Garber shared that “Being
a non-binary person leading an
incredibly male-dominated cast …
brings a lot to (the) show and makes
it a vastly different production.”
Further, they said the creative
team was “making an intentional
choice to have different inter-
pretations of the characters than
people normally see presented.” In
their directing, they made certain
to deviate from the version of Rose
that is often “copy and pasted in
most productions.” Further, Gar-
ber said “It’s different watching
a 28-year-old play a boy going to
war than watching kids between
18-22, the age these kids (in the
show) were going to war. You real-
ize they are kids … that they were
sending kids to war. This makes it
hard to watch, but it adds some-
thing you don’t get in (all produc-
tions of ‘Dogfight.’)”
Challenging the ways in which
“Dogfight”
is
often
performed
while maintaining a staunch com-
mitment to dramaturgy, this pro-
duction is sure to be exciting,
tear-jerking and meaningful. A
bold exploration of masculinity
and war, this student-run produc-
tion “Dogfight” is a testament to
how great art can be made through
a thoughtful process.
“Dogfight” will be performed at
the Arthur Miller Theatre on Feb.
11 and 12 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 13 at
2 p.m. All admission is free and
seating will be filled on a first-
come-first-serve basis. Those hop-
ing to see the show are advised to
get there early! Audience members
should be aware of the sensitive
and potentially triggering subject
matter of the piece. “Dogfight,” in
particular, grapples with themes
of masculinity, assault and racism.
Pictures provided by Jack Zeile
Design by Lindsay Farb
KARI ANDERSON
Daily Arts Writer
NICOLE APPIANI
Daily Arts Contributor
JACK MOESER
Daily Arts Writer
Read more at MichiganDaily.com