Category: Arts

REVIEW: It Was Divine

Shannon Z Leave a comment

“I’m not asking for too much/I’m asking the wrong motherfucker

Just ’cause we’re in love/Doesn’t mean that we’re right for each other”

Alina Baraz croons this out of pure self-love in “To Me”, the emotional turning point of her masterful debut studio album, It Was Divine. If emotive self-transformation were a sprawling mansion, It Was Divine would be the blueprint – each track is an artfully composed mood in itself, while the album narrates a tumultuous relationship from start to finish.

Baraz introduces her R&B-soul dreamscape with “My Whole Life”, a romantic carpet-ride of a song that perfectly encapsulates the overwhelming wonder of finding ‘the one’. Backed by romantic string instrumentals, Baraz repeatedly choruses: “I can see my whole life when I’m with you”, as if transfixed by the extent to which she can imagine the entirety of their joint futures. From this track onwards, Baraz constructs a spitting musical image of early relationship paradise: songs in the album’s first half are lush with motifs like vibrant sunsets, distinctive perfumes, and lavish resorts. “Off the Grid” featuring Khalid reflects the effortless nature of being comfortably in-tune with one’s lover – Baraz and Khalid sing promises like “Say the word and you know I’ll follow/Off the grid in the El Dorado/Could be nice in the summertime/We could sit inside, in the silence”. According to an Apple Music interview, Baraz describes their frequent collaboration as “effortless” and “in sync”, as the song’s infectiously vibe-able chorus suggests.

“Can’t keep makin’ a home out of you/Just ’cause you’re asking me to

I’m not asking for too much (Can we do it over?)”

“To Me” and its subsequent interlude, “Memo Blue”, effectively transition the tone of It Was Divine from hopelessly-in-love to reprocessing love as an independent emotion. “Memo Blue” resembles an immersive ASMR experience – the plinking of piano keys awakens Baraz from her rosy paradisal getaway, followed by soul-searching lines “I can only meet you as deep as you have met yourself/I can only reach you from where you are”. Baraz follows these important realizations with the hypnotic “Who Got Me”, a song of pure self-love featuring springy drum beats and Baraz’s distinctive, ethereal warble. By the song’s third verse, Baraz seems to transcend any doubt expressed by “Who got me like I do/When all of this is through”. The instrumentals recede while her voice, a born-again bird surging towards the sky, swells into a higher key.

It’s only fitting that Baraz ends It Was Divine with “The Beginning”; the album commands a similar regenerative power that reflects Baraz’s intent to introduce a new chapter into her music. This album is pure, unadulterated art, and Baraz’s ‘divine’ energy ties the work together with not a song out of place. I would highly recommend adding It Was Divine to your music libraries and watching its superbly aesthetic lyric videos on Youtube.

 

REVIEW: Heartbreak Weather

Neha Srinivasan 2 Comments

Whether I’m cleaning the bathroom, doing the crossword, or deeply entrenched in a design, music is usually my constant companion. Niall Horan’s new album, Heartbreak Weather, has been one of the albums keeping me company as I wrap up the school year.

What I like about this album can be classified into two categories. First, the instrumentals are engaging enough to stand alone. The chords aren’t hackneyed – songs aren’t interesting when I can predict all the notes that come next without having even heard the song before – but they are still comfortable. The instrumentals are deeply layered, with only a light reliance on engineered sounds, making the music seem more genuine. Even in the slower songs, the simplicity of the acoustic guitar is shaded by the strings in the background. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve listened to this album since I first took a listen in March, but each time I do there is something new I hear in the songs.  I realized, for example, while trying to articulate why this music appeals so much to me, that there is always a moving base line. Most songs, of course, have a base element, but some simply hold a note. In my favorite songs on Heartbreak Weather, however, the frequent use of a shifting base line gives the songs a level of movement that keeps me engaged.

Second, the lyrics are different. I often don’t pay attention to the lyrics in a song, but these lyrics discuss the nuances of relationships, not the generic moments or feelings we hear so frequently. For example, in “Bend the Rules,” the lines “Cause on paper you don’t break them, but it hurts so bad the way you bend the rules” addresses some of the grey area in relationships that I don’t see surface often in songs about love. As Horan has stated was his intent with this album, the songs explore all facets of relationships, in a variety of musical styles, making the album suitable for listening across many moods. Similarly, some of the imagery in the lyrics is wonderfully specific. For example, “Are you all dressed up but with nowhere to go” in “Put A Little Love On Me,” or “And yeah we were dancing, dancing to Bruno” evoke precise images that make the listening experience so much better.

Most of my personal music “classics” – the albums that feel like home whenever I listen to them – are albums from the 80s to which I grew up listening. There are few modern albums that have made it into that category so far, but Heartbreak Weather is well on its way to making it in.

REVIEW: Mary Ventura and The Ninth Kingdom: A Story

Shannon Z Leave a comment

As much as Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom bears a whimsical title similar to that of a fantasy bildungsroman, this short story, recently recovered from the Sylvia Plath archives, is anything but. Underneath Plath’s vivid narrative lie dark ideas that foreshadow the author’s first major suicide attempt in 1953, mere months from when she finished writing the story in December of 1952. Upon its completion, during which Plath was a 20 year old student at Smith College, Plath submitted the story to the Mademoiselle magazine where it was rejected and largely forgotten until its official publication last June by Harper Perennial. The story follows a young woman named Mary Ventura and her reluctant journey by train to an indeterminate location referred to as ‘the ninth kingdom’. Shrouding the ninth kingdom is an unsettling aura of mystery – it is both Mary’s final destination and the last station of the train’s travel north – and despite Mary’s various inquiries, the reader remains equally in the dark of what is to await her.

“There are no return trips on this line,’ the woman said softly. ‘Once you get to the ninth kingdom, there is no going back. It is the kingdom of negation, of the frozen will. It has many names.”

Though the story makes for a one-sitting read, Mary’s allegorical tale requires more than a once-over in order to extract Plath’s views on female independence, fate, and mortality. What strikes me as most interesting is how the story not only ends but begins with a sense of finality: from the moment Mary climbs aboard her train of fate, she crosses an implied point of no return. Mary’s parents dismiss her concerns and assert that “Everyone has to go away sooner or later”, plunging Mary into a seemingly inevitable state of oblivion and compliance. Following this, a secondary character whom is referred to only as “the woman” emerges; unlike Mary, the Woman has taken the train before and is knowledgable in the ‘rules’ which passengers must abide by – one could interpret her as the classic teacher in a bildungsroman, or even Mary’s innermost thoughts, personified. This is emphasized by how Plath’s attentive prose draws a stark contrast between the Woman’s comforting presence and the bleak, sanguine train environment. Plath paints Mary’s surroundings in smoke and blood, a foreboding palette interrupted only by moments of the Woman’s “tenderness” and gentle guidance. The colors orange and red seem to flood Plath’s imagined world; from the plush seats and red ticket stubs that match Mrs. Ventura’s “painted red mouth” to the ominous sun visible from the train window, an “orange color… deepening into red”.

Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom is, as Plath affirms, a ‘vaguely symbolic tale’ – however, as with any allegorical tale, it’s difficult to ascertain what the ninth kingdom, the train, or Mary’s escape truly represent. Taken optimistically, the train and its oblivious passengers could represent a clockwork lifestyle from which Mary springs free out of sheer will, empowered by a refusal to accept a predestined path. However, interpreted with Plath’s battle with depression and early suicide, the train ride could represent a grappling with the truth of one’s impending doom, with Mary’s escape alluding to choosing premature death instead. With Mary’s premature suicide or train departure comes the ultimate irony – though freedom blooms from the ending’s springtime imagery, Mary is forever shackled with oblivion over her journey’s defining question: “But what is the ninth kingdom?”

REVIEW: Onward

Lucy Leave a comment

While I hadn’t heard much buzz about this movie, I’d say it was pretty good! Disney/Pixar does a good job when they’re not making the 10,000 sequel to something. It was a classic, heartfelt story of how an adventure could bring two opposite people together.

The first thing that I loved about this were the voices. These included Chris Pratt and Tom Holland as the main characters, as well as Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Octavia Spencer. Chris Pratt is one of my favorite actors, and both he and Tom Holland definitely made their characters interesting and unique, which can be hard when you are just a voice. The familiar voices also helped me enjoy more of the movie as well as feel comfortable right away.

One of my favorite things was the relationship between the two brothers. One was incredibly shy, and the other was as outgoing as can be, and they generally clashed. But as they continued on their adventure, their relationship slowly evolved into mutual respect and friendship. And this was not totally in a blatant way either, which made it all the more astonishing when the younger brother realized that his sibling had been taking care of him the way his dad would have all along. I loved this “twist”, if you will, because it really supports the idea of an unconventional but still complete family, and was certainly a tear-jerking moment.

The only things that I have to say I did not like were the lack of humor and the role of the manticore. Chris Pratt is a very humorous actor, and Tom Holland can be pretty funny as well. I feel that they did not use this to its full potential, and that the movie could have been a lot funnier overall, all though it did have its moments. I also thought that the manticore was a bit overplayed and cheesy, and seemed like an easy insert for the boys to magically have what was needed, and to be in the right place at the right time. I thought that the whole journey with her and the mother was a little pointless, and only served the purpose of taking up time. I think this movie unfortunately missed out on having a great soundtrack, because Disney/Pixar often does a great job of that. I saw a lot of moments that could really have amped up the song quality to make the movie even better.

The last thing I wanted to touch on was the character of the older brother. He was obsessed with a particular game (Dungeons and Dragons style), and was originally portrayed as annoying and a nerd. However, he is accepted and even a hero at the end, which I think was an important message to send to kids who are perhaps teased for their more nerdy tastes in school. I loved how he was passionately, unapologetically, happy and proud which made him a great role model.

Overall, I thought the movie was well made and unique, mostly because of the different characters and the final twist of the younger brother’s discovery and the final scene with the dad. While it wasn’t a standout for me in terms of great Disney/Pixar movies, it certainly was enjoyable. And it was definitely better than a 4th sequel to the Troll’s movie.

REVIEW: The Cactus League

Aria Gerson Leave a comment

To baseball fans, MLB’s annual spring training is almost romantic. After a long winter without baseball, spring training finally marks the sport’s return.

Emily Nemens’ novel The Cactus League digs into the darker side, the hopefulness of baseball’s spring training replaced by a cast of characters all struggling in their own way.

The book reads less as one overarching story and more as a series of interconnected character studies. Each chapter focuses on one person connected with the Los Angeles Lions baseball team during its spring season in Scottsdale, Arizona. Each story stands on its own but focuses on a central thread: how the divorce of star player Jason Goodyear happened. Goodyear’s fall from grace is revealed bit by bit from the perspectives of those around him before finally telling it from his perspective.

The Cactus League is a baseball novel that clearly understands baseball. The game scenes are realistic, and more importantly, the book has a good grasp on baseball’s social scene. Many who have a connection to baseball are part of the story — the aging batting coach, the high-powered agent, the rookie fresh out of college, the “cleat-chaser,” the baseball wives. Each character has a vice and all are somewhat unlikeable, yet their individual arcs were compelling enough to keep me reading.

I was able to figure out (for the most part) what was going on with Goodyear halfway through the novel. It was unclear if that was the intention or not and the heavy-handed foreshadowing did detract a bit from the intrigue. That said, the character development for the other characters was strong enough to stand on its own.

Overall, The Cactus League was a good read that transported me back to the spring training we missed out on this year. I love character-driven stories so it was really interesting to get inside the heads of a wide variety of characters. At the same time, I wished some of the explorations had been deeper. While the idea of class and what it means to be rich, poor or somewhere in between was observed at length, many of the characters also had preconceived notions about race and gender that I felt were left unexplored. Some of the characters were racist or sexist or problematic in other ways. I didn’t have a problem with that in itself — people in general are often racist or sexist and that shouldn’t magically change in a book — but given the depth with which class was explored, I wanted to see more in the other areas as well.

While most of the book felt only loosely connected, the ending to The Cactus League was the payoff. It brought together many of the characters from the earlier stories and showed how in the cactus league, everyone’s lives were affected by the others and everyone had a different piece of the story. Not every character had their arc resolved, but the ending was a provocative conclusion to the main spine of the story.

PREVIEW: Onward

Lucy Leave a comment

This Disney-Pixar movie premiered in theaters on March 6th. Now available on Disney Plus, the movie features teenage elf brothers, voiced by Chris Pratt and Tom Holland. The brothers go on a journey filled with magic and fun to spend one last day with their father. However when their mother realizes her sons are missing, she embarks on a journey as well, to find them and bring them home.

I find that most Disney-Pixar crossover movies turn out to be some of my favorites (examples: Cars, Wall-E, Up, Coco, and many others), so I am optimistic about this one as well. And it got fairly good reviews on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Facebook, and Google. I will let you guys know how it is as soon as I can convince one of my family members to watch it with me!

Reminder- the movie is available on Disney Plus: https://www.disneyplus.com

Enjoy!