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Bon Iver, the acoustic, rustic Wisconsin band led by Justin Vernon, famous for “Skinny Love” and that one song you thought you heard on the TV show “Chuck” once, is one of my favorite artists. Bon Iver is comprised of Vernon along with Michael Noyce, Sean Carey, and Matthew McCaughan. Even the least inclined Indie fans can find pleasure in listening to Bon Iver’s music. It is easy to comprehend why Bon Iver has such universal appeal; his flawless voice and ability to transcend multiple octaves paired with his band’s mastery of a wide variety of instruments allow the band to create meaningful, appealing, powerful music. Even if you strip the songs of their lyrics you will still appreciate the beauty in the instrumentals. Add the words back in, and you become consumed with the awe of Justin Vernon’s writing.

Bon Iver has produced two studio albums, For Emma: Forever Ago and the recent Bon Iver. Avid fans of the first album received a slight shock upon listening to Bon Iver for the first time. The second album vividly differs from its previous, a transformation that unsettled the fan base. For Emma: Forever Ago maintained an acoustic overtone throughout the album, occasionally employing different uses of vocals but sustaining an overall similar style. Bon Iver, contrarily, fluctuates in genre and provides much more depth to their original work. While tracks such as “Holocene” and “Calgary” fit into the previous mold, “Towers, Minnesota WI, Hinnom TX and Beth/Rest” most certainly do not. An electric guitar (a sharper, stronger sound than Bon Iver listeners are accustomed to) is prevalent in many of the songs, straying away from the mellow hum of For Emma. Critics instantly attacked “Beth/Rest,” the album’s last track, for its obvious 80’s influence and stark stylistic departure from their tone, which I agree with.

However, while most people were disappointed in the album, I embraced it with gratitude. It is just as stunning as its predecessor in sound quality, and even more inspiring in its lyricism. Each song is titled after a geographic location, all referring to historic places in Vernon’s life. This provides a much more personal connection than did his first album, and in my opinion only added to its appeal. While it is evident that their style is changing, Bon Iver still remains one of the most talented groups of musicians in the business today, and I cannot wait for what they produce next. Which brings me back to my initial plea: I beg of you Justin, do not stop making music.

There’s little point in me picking out the best songs, as they are all fantastic, but:

“Perth, Towers, Hinnom TX, and Wash.”

**Attention: If at any time in your life you arrive at a moment when you feel content, or satisfied, or pleased, and want to reflect on that unshakable buzz of euphoria that remains after true moments of happiness please take a few minutes to sit and listen to this song; allow yourself to be consumed with the amber light that all but perpetually radiates from it, and simply enjoy good music.

It’s nice to be acknowledged for something you’ve worked on, and there’s nothing wrong with not being acknowledged either. Having something you’ve done be attributed to someone or something else however inevitable or justified— on the other hand, can be something of a downer indeed.

Some media frequently carry around a reputation for being supremely effortless hackjobs. (Percussion, for instance, is one such: “So you just bang around on drums and stuff? That’s awesome, man, I should’ve done that, it would’ve been so much easier”). People outside any given field don’t necessarily appreciate that there is a finesse to everything, not just what they themselves do. That’s how there are specialists, experts, professionals. Art is, after all, an art.

Another fallacy assumes that better work is the direct result of more expensive equipment. “The better the oddslot camera, the better the picture!” Friends, on occasion, will be all too glad to ooh and ahh over something I’ve shot. “But you have one of those big black cameras, don’t you,” they add, glancing at the incriminating SLR in my had, as if that explained everything. “That’s a really good picture,” I’ve overheard. Then, as an aside, “he’s got a nice camera.” But things don’t work that way, of course. Out of every hundred clicks of the shutter button and repeated trial and error might a small handful of images satisfactory enough to be post-processed and touched up be picked out. Or, as an oft-quoted anecdote from Sam Haskins puts it:

A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said “I love your pictures— they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.” He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: “That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”

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TChen realizes she is probably preaching to the choir and apologizes for this overly short and rant-y diatribe.

If, in a twist on the Snow White fairytale, Snow were to carry a gun, I imagine it would be something like one of these singing bird pistols made by Frères (French for brothers) Rochat in the early 1800s – beautiful, harmless, and adorned by a singing bird.

Despite appearances, these two pistols are actually music boxes that move and play music thanks to an extremely intricate mechanism. When the pistols are “fired,” rather than a deadly bullet, a small bird, adorned with real feathers, “shoots” out and rests on top of the pistol’s barrel.  Click here to watch a video of the pistols in action.

The singing bird pistols, though heavily decorated, are made to look and function very similarly to real pistols. Like regular pistols, to “fire,” each singing bird pistol must be”cocked” and the trigger pulled. Unlike regular pistols, however, they must be wound up first, much like an old fashioned clock. The music box mechanism is based on old watch-making techniques, and contains several hundred small parts.

The brothers Rochat were famous for their intricate singing bird music boxes, particularly their snuff boxes. Each creation had a small realistic mechanical bird that could sing on command hidden out of sight. For more information on Frères Rochat, click here.

High-end collectors treasure the surviving Rochat music boxes. These singing bird pistols, which are the only known set in existence, sold for around $5.8 million at auction. Very few other singing bird pistols have survived, and the four other known pistols are currently housed in museum collections.

As far back as art historians seem to be able to go, art has always existed as a means of resistance, a catalyst to revolution, and a construct for exposing societal and political flaws.  With the continual privatization of the art market all over the world, guiding it out of the hands of restricting state and religious direction and patronage, artists are freer than ever to combine their own dissatisfactions with the existing power structure, stereotypes, preconceptions, etc. with forms of art that are more experimental and avant-garde.   Increasingly, the once European and U.S. dominated art market has shifted considerably.  Though cities like London and New York are still the major sellers of art, and Paris may always be the prime location for exhibition, some of the highest selling and most talked about art is coming out of places like Beijing and Dubai.   Themes that are common are usually similar to the same values coming out of Western contemporary art like feminism, war, and consumerism.  Aesthetically, the two hemispheres have been producing vey similar looking art as well.  Some point to this as an achievement in the universality and pervasiveness of art, though the point has also been made by some scholars that European art has had its own form of ‘colonialism,’ and Middle Eastern art (and for that matter, African and Asian) has been overly influenced by Eurocentrism, to the point where the unique Middle Eastern artistic tradition has been overshadowed and replaced with art that is a product of European art history.  If this is the case, the Middle East seems to be beating the West at their own game.  In 2008, Farhad Moshiri became the first Middle Eastern artist to sell an artwork at auction for over $1 million (specifically $1.05 million), and the numbers have only been growing since, with the Dubai Art Faire attracting some of the most elite in the art world, to the point where they have been the ones donating to the Louvre.

In a post-9/11 world, it seems as though anything related to the Middle East is translated through the lens of terrorism, whether it is pro or anti war.  It is not uncommon for news stories or interviews with Middle Easterners to solely focus on how the war has affected them, their opinions on it, the racism that has been engendered by the event, etc.   Though these things can’t be undermined, it is important to realize that there are other issues at stake in the Middle East, and there is a lot of art that reflects this.  They also have their genres of landscape painting, illustration, political cartoons, splatter painting, and so forth.

Though European and American connoisseurs of art seem to be receptive to contemporary art coming out of the Middle East, for many this is still fairly new territory.  U.S. museums usually have much less Middle Eastern art in comparison to their European collections, and after the controversy over the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad there was a considerable backlash in some prominent museums (most notably the Met), where many ancient works of Middle Eastern art were put into storage out of fear of reprisal.  Even U of M, as progressive as it may be, added for this Fall its first course on Middle Eastern art in years.  However, it does seem as though there has been a significant integration in the recent past of the Middle East into the global art market, and it only shows signs of increasing popularity.

“Blue and Yellow, Blue and Yellow, Blue and Yellow…” As I walked into Hill Auditorium last night to see Pusha T and Chiddy Bang perform, I was bombarded with the Ann Arbor native rapper P.L.’s mix of Wiz Khalifa’s classic single. The chant ushered me into a unique atmosphere I had no anticipation of seeing. Having been in Hill Auditorium for the Lupe Fiasco concert last year, I expected a rambunctious and excited mob of students. Instead, I casually walked in between small groups of friends, mostly sitting patiently and waiting for the actual show to begin. Both the mezzanine and balcony sections were closed off, and still hordes of seats remained empty throughout the show. This reduced audience effected the show in both positive and negative ways: it created an intimate section that thrived during Chiddy’s performance, allowing the duo to interact easily with the crowd, but it significantly hurt Pusha T’s portion.

To my extreme chagrin the crowd did not appreciate Pusha T’s opening act. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Pusha T is a rapper who once belonged to the rap duo Clipse. Formed by Pusha T and his brother Malice, Clipse played an enormous role in the rap industry during the ‘90s and early 2000’s. Pusha T is by far a more accomplished and celebrated rapper than Chiddy bang, yet the crowd last night did little to recognize this. Unfortunately, it was clear after a few songs that Pusha T realized this, and it was downright painful to have to watch him attempt to feed off an energy that was completely absent. Truthfully, it was the wrong audience for a Pusha T show. Predominantly white and all young enough that they may have missed Clipse’s prime, the students in the audience were much more interested in Chiddy Bang. I was sad to see this, as Pusha killed the few songs he performed and deserves much more respect than he was given.

Chiddy Bang, conversely, began their show to an energetic audience. To my satisfaction, after two songs Xaphoon Jones (the brains behind Chiddy’s beats) paid tribute to Pusha T, referencing him as the first rap album he ever purchased and essentially condemning the audience for not supporting him more. Aside from this correction, Chiddy and Xaphoon put on a great show. As Chiddy’s intended audience is the high school through college age, this crowd was appropriate and contributed to the duo’s energy and performance. The highlight of the evening, by far, was Chiddy’s freestyle. Asking the audience for five completely random, non-related topics, Xaphoon presented Chiddy with a paper plate and a microphone, and asked for a rap. Indulging him, Chiddy proceeded to create a two and-a-half minute, spontaneous and brand new freestyle, mentioning each of the subjects. These included the words, “voltron, platypus, and Michigan,” no easy terms with which to rhyme. Yet he succeeded, and secured the audience’s outrageous praise. Overall, the concert was tremendously enjoyable, and even though Pusha T’s contribution went unappreciated, the combination of him and Chiddy Bang allowed for a great concert.

Disregard the quality, just to get a taste of the show: