Issue
In This
Summertime Eating
Emerson Tenney 3
The Value of Simplicity
Andrew Liu 2 TAL FRIEDEN 4
Cyborgs, Not Goddesses ELENA RENKEN 5
Two Voices Carry Julian Towers 6
Sad Spring Break Forever
postCover by Rémy Poisson
MAR 23
VOL 21 —
ISSUE 8
FEATURES
The Value of Simplicity
I
A Conversation with the Brown Marching Band written By Andrew Liu – illustrated by Rémy Poisson
t has almost been one year since I last played music with a band. At
Letter from the Editor
the start of my freshman year, I made the difficult choice to drop music and set aside time for other pursuits, and up until now I had swept feelings of regret and treasured band memories to the back of my mind. After all, wasn’t college the time to knuckle down, pick your priorities, and move forward? I recently had the opportunity, however, to sit down with the e-board of the Brown Band, and in half an hour I was reminded of the joy and magic I found in symphonic band. Instead of playing in concerts, marching band members play at football games, marching in complex patterns and showing off their uniforms as they do so. A marching band typically performs on the field during halftime, when the energy in the stadium is at its highest. In front of such crowds, players need to have stage presence in addition to musical ability. But while marching band is very different from symphonic band, there is one quality that they share: in band, life is distilled down to just the music and people around you. The Brown Band dates back to 1924, when then freshman Irving Harris founded it, stunned to hear that the university did not have a marching band. Beginning with a makeshift group of 26, the Brown Band was born with Harris wielding a baton made from a mop handle as its tenacious leader.
Fields Considered "Industries" by Shiru Cafe
Dear Readers, Spring break is upon us, and I am looking
covered too, with a chronicle of the Brown
forward to fleeing to an even more rainy
Marching Band’s antics (distance from their
Dublin. I’m also looking forward, however,
trumpets will probably help foster fond
to taking a copy of Post- with me: perhaps
feelings) as well as a review of the Lucius
I’ll leave it behind in an Irish cafe (or let’s
concert this past weekend. For good measure,
be honest, pub), and someone 3,000 miles
we also have a review on XXXTentacion’s new
away will have a good chuckle learning
album, through which I learned more about
about Brown’s Marching Band. I urge you,
Soundcloud rap than I thought I ever would.
gentle reader, to take a copy with you too,
1. Dairy 2. Outsourcing / Offspring 3. Computer Game 4.
Semiconductors
5. Alternative Dispute Resolution
no matter how far your travels take you this
Ideas for our last issues of the semester?
week, and leave it behind for an unsuspecting
Thoughts on the Spring Weekend lineup?
passerbyer.
Tips for what to do in Ireland besides hanging
7. Building Materials
out with sheep? Let me know at post@
8. Paper & Forest products
To get you in the mood for spring break, we
browndailyherald.com.
bring you an exploration of Berlin Art Week and a rumination on multi-generational family get-togethers. If you for some reason miss Brown and Providence, we’ve got you
Happy Spring Break!
Saanya - editor in chief
2 post–
The first experiences of many of the band members today are no less unique. For David Cabatingan ’21, a saxophonist in the band, “ADOCH really cemented for me that it was a great community to be a part of, with people all across campus and in classes that I know.” Adam Mercier ’19, Vice President of the Band Board, remembers that at the first rehearsal, “Everybody got on their chairs and started playing ‘Al.’ I was like...what the heck? I couldn’t leave after seeing what I saw.” Sofia Frohna ’20, Corresponding Secretary (“CorSec”), found herself pulled in without any previous experience with a band instrument: “I don’t play an actual band instrument, but I do have a melodica, which is a sort of a keyboardhorn. I was like, ‘Can I play this?’ And they were like, ‘Sure! Just find a section to join.’ The flute section leader at the time just took me in and welcomed me into the band.” For Natalie Delworth ’19, Head Student Conductor, “I saw people playing percussion, and I always wanted to try the drums or cymbals. They said they could just teach me to play the cymbals, that of course I could join.” The band also tries to make it easy for those with other time commitments to participate. Kelvin Wong ’20, Business Manager (“money god”), says, “I was in marching band in high school, but I didn’t like having to practice. The Brown Band...it’s like doing marching band S/NC.”
6. Import & Export
9. Defence & Space 10. Ranching *This top 10 list is not endorsed by Shiru Cafe, but these categories are 100% real
NARRATIVE Waves of laughter greet each response at the table. It’s the type of laughter that is loose, free, and incredibly contagious. Immediately after Kelvin’s response, the board discussed using “it’s like doing marching band S/NC” as a slogan on one of the band’s buttons. Sofia explained that the band has been making buttons during football seasons for decades, which foster interactions among spectators and other teams. Sophia recalls, “A guy at the Fenway game was like, ‘Oh! This is a great button! I’ve been
with many memorable experiences. Summer says, “We go caroling around campus every semester to spread cheer before finals. This year it was pouring rain. Sophia and I went around giving hot chocolate to people. It was a wild experience walking on the street, pouring rain and pushing a cart with hot chocolate, but it was so nice to see people’s day brighten because of it.” Other band events stand out to different members. For Gaby, it is commencement: “Walking down that hill during commencement, with
Full of wit and humor, past buttons have read “Ted Cruz ’92 is the Zodiac Killer” (Princeton, 2017), “Big Red What?” (Cornell, 2015), “Rotten to the Core Curriculum” (Columbia, 2007), to name just a few. collecting them for 30 years!’ Other schools really enjoy the fact that we make buttons. At the Fenway game, Dartmouth actually gave us buttons, which was a really nice gesture. We become really close with other bands.” Full of wit and humor, past buttons have read “Ted Cruz ’92 is the Zodiac Killer” (Princeton, 2017), “Big Red What?” (Cornell, 2015), “Rotten to the Core Curriculum” (Columbia, 2007), to name just a few. For this year’s home game, the button is simply a picture of Blueno. Another band tradition is equally unique, in addition to being visually stunning: the Brown Band on ice. In fact, Brown boasts the world’s only ice skating band. The Brown Band performs an ice show after two to three games during Hockey Season. Summer Gerry ’20, General Manager (“mom”), says, “You don’t have to know how to skate to join the band. Many people haven’t even seen ice. I host Learn to Skate, where we all learn together and have a great time.” For those who still don’t have a knack for it, there is nothing to fear. “I have often been dragged around the ice by someone who knows how to skate while I’m playing,” says Sofia, “which really just shows the level of support in the band.” One of the most enduring traditions, however, is returning to campus. “We have a lot of alumni that come back,” says Gaby Usabal ’19, President of the Band Board. “We have alumni ice shows. We have an alumni game. At commencement, alumni and current members play together. Even the guy who started the buttons comes back.” At the meeting, I noticed several black-and-white photos of previous groups skating. Adam mentions recently finding “a video of an ice show from 1980, a reminder of our unbroken chain of tradition.” These relics are a reminder of how solid the foundations of this group are, and it makes perfect sense that a group with such spirit and camaraderie lives on after graduation. “That sense of community transcends your time here at Brown. The band itself has never changed, spreading cheer and goofiness,” adds Gaby. Natalie agrees: “Part of the reason I love this group is that we all just love being goofs together. It’s a connection I still want to have in my later adult years.” Participating in the Brown Band also comes
everyone cheering and alumni there...it’s such an emotional experience. It’s almost like experiencing graduation a few times.” For first-years Sebastien Jean-Pierre ’21 and David Cabatingan ’21, it’s the trips to the games: “For the Cornell Trip, we always hear about Ezra Cornell, and during the parade, we yell at Cornell people to join the band, even though they would literally have to transfer schools,” says Sebastien. For many like Adam, however, it is also about family. The band was the first organization on campus that Adam joined. He went to Jo’s one day with a group of fellow freshmen, who welcomed him in with a conversation about memes. That conversation formed the friendship between himself, his current best friend and his girlfriend. Adam sums it up by saying, “I just sat down with this group of people I'd never met before, and we shared two common languages: band and memes.” After listening to Gaby’s and Natalie’s comments, I could not help but remember some of the faces back home with whom I shared countless laughs in band. There are, of course, moments in band that are profound and sentimental, whether it is sharing a great moment in a piece of music or realizing a reservoir of support in the people around you, but I think the true nature of band is far simpler. It’s an amalgam of quips and silly jokes that breathe the most amazingly awkward humor, full of childlike joy. The magic of it all lies in its simplicity. After speaking with this wonderful group of people and looking back on my own years of playing with a band, I realize now that I miss band the way I miss being a kid. If there is one thing I believe that the band experience embodies the most, it is innocence. I can think of few other extracurriculars, or things in the world for that matter, where the scale is so tipped toward happiness and unity rather than stress. After sitting with these people for just half an hour, I probably laughed more than I do on average in an entire day. I was reminded that there are things in this world that don’t have to carry so much weight in order to have meaning—that inside of all us, there should always be permission to let loose.
Summertime Eating "Shimmers of Time" By Emerson Tenney Of all my many food memories, I most vividly remember convening on the wrap-around front porch of the Vassilaros' summer home. The house, a converted chicken farm and one of the few vestiges of a time before Bridgehampton was synonymous with excess, was built on coffee. The people behind the coffee are tall, tan, and Greek. They made their living roasting and selling Vassilaros & Sons coffee on just about every street corner in New York City. Although they had plenty of money, money never seemed to have them and so, while renovating the property, they glossed over details expected by the typical Upper West Side renter. The floors remained dusty stone, the upstairs bedrooms narrow and cramped. Air conditioning was never installed. All that's okay though. We like the windows open. So each summer, when the Vassilaros' pack up and ship themselves off to Greece for the languid months between spring and fall, my father and I rush right in. The house is vast the way a labyrinth is vast. We do our best to fill it. The house likes to keep a minimum capacity of 10 and we oblige her. My dad, his wife, her family and their children, their friends, and me and my closest childhood friends. Oftentimes there are more.
What has come from the land that we share will bring us together. The days move in slow shimmers of time. Shadows passing across the lawn that unfurls from the front door and rolls all the way down to the privet lining the road mark the increments of existing. Everything about the air and the land is rich and so full of living that I want to dive into it. Eat it the way one eats a peach. In these deeply fertile hours, it's easy to see food as an extension of the self. What has come from the land that we share and will bring us together. In the late afternoon, the milling about slows. Bikes return from the sandy dunes of the beach and bodies materialize out of the grasses around the pool. We meet each other in the kitchen. Inevitably someone from the younger generation will put on music. This task used to fall to my friends and me, but now we find ourselves ousted by the even younger folk who we've just suddenly realized are driving and having sex and, disconcertingly, no longer seven-anda-half years old. Truth be told, it doesn't really make a difference; everyone still plays Fleetwood Mac and ends the night outside singing “Dancing In The Moonlight.” Cooking is slow; chopping becomes more of an excuse to share the past year's gossip than a way of getting things done. This is how we like it. My dad makes drinks on the back corner of the kitchen island as my friends and I bus around the stove and oven
"He's so nice and his balls are so saggy." "Do you want gum?" "I want cocaine." "I just can't stand all of these uneducated philistines." march 23, 2018 3
NARRATIVE opposite him. By the time everything is finished and hot and heaped into massive white bowls, we are sufficiently drunk. We carry out the plates and arrange them along the sprawling wooden table that runs the length of the porch. Everyone who was not in the kitchen is already waiting. Then there is an almost imperceptible instance of silence. A space in which to say, "I see the community that has gathered around me." Sometimes someone will run down to one end of the table and take a photo, those furthest away leaning all the way in so as to be seen. More often than not the moment goes uncelebrated. It is then, after this brief pause that the food disappears. I've never known exactly where it goes. Perhaps somewhere deep in the annals of my memory there exists an entire folder dedicated to the content of these meals. But for now all that remains is the long table with its smooth wood and flickering candle light, fireflies just beyond the porch, and the low persistent humming of voices coming together, circling around the dishes that served as a reason for talking.
Cyborgs, Not Goddesses Illusions, Erasure, and Arja Renell By Tal Frieden illustrated by Molly Kate Young On a chilly fall morning on the Schillerpromenade, a few performers clad in colorful, opaque hula skirts added some flavor to an otherwise gray day. While a purple creature played tag with neighborhood children and its green friend hugged passersby, patrons of Berlin Art Week gathered around Top Schillerpalais for “Protest Song Competition,” a featured show in Performance Voyage 7. Once the creatures disappeared, those in attendance filed inside for the collection of performance pieces and short films curated by the Finnish MUU Galleria. Berlin Art Week boasts in its magazine that “the city has once again dedicated itself to art.” For one week in September, Berlin was flooded with film screenings from Los Angeles, dance-workshopqua-performances from Paris, visiting art from the United Arab Emirates, and a critical mass of artists, collectors, and students (myself included) immersed in the creative and inspirational scene. Performance Voyage 7 included an array of artists from all over Europe, as well as one from Peru, and a mix of installations, performance pieces, and short films. Among them was Arja Renell—an artist, architect, and ‘urban designer’ from Finland. Barefoot and wearing a black dress and a headscarf, she sat in front of her laptop and greeted guests from a short black table. Speakers filled the space with vaguely industrial sounds. While the crowd slowly quieted down, Renell turned to a variety of herbs carefully arranged on her black table. She addressed each herb individually, crushing it first with a rock, her fingers, and then a blunt wooden tool. For about ten minutes, the audience patiently listened to the soundtrack of industry—a mix of noises including the beeps of a truck backing up over gravel, hammering (or shoveling?) noises, and more—watching as Renell collected the leaves and pine needles in small piles. Renell combined the herbs and turned back to her laptop with purpose. Gone was the industrial noise—now a babbling brook accompanied her as she sprinkled the herbs 4 post–
into an egg-sized wicker strainer. Renell stood. She approached the first of several white plinths in the room, each holding hourglass-shaped teacups. The artist poured hot water through her strainer into each of the teacups and offered them, with a bow of the head and a smile, to nearby viewers-turnedparticipants. She continued this until all of the teacups had been distributed. Some of us smiled and started to drink the tea while Renell poured for others. After returning to her black platform at the front of the room, Renell poured a cup, inhaled a deep breath, nodded a smile to the onlookers, and took a sip. She looked up from her glass and said, "All of these plants were collected from a forest in northern Finland. The area has been polluted by a nickel mine that was recently built, and the people who live there don't know if their forest is safe, or if they can still eat these plants." Then she started to cry. We were silent. Some standing, some sitting, all reeling, responding, re-thinking. What we had taken for granted—a cup of tea—was transformed into a political prop. The liquid was no longer an infusion of herbs but a crossgrounds, a battlefield, melding the natural and the machine, ambiguously pure and toxic. I was reminded of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” which ends with the bold assertion, “I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess,” and encourages feminism to embrace a bricolage with technology, as opposed to turning to purist, earth-mother feminism. Renell is no goddess, and she does not allow us to think ourselves goddesses. Instead, we are ambiguously, strenuously, and sometimes unwittingly of nature. Our Mother Earth has nickel mines, and we must pay the price. She reminds us that we cannot escape the machine, and she asks us to take a sip. *** Renell’s work punctures a keyhole in the illusion of modernity, the illusion that Man (and his throbbing appendage, Machine) conquers Nature. The illusion allows us to divorce consumption in the digital age from our material reality—we are led to forget about the rare earth minerals and exploited
miners that make my laptop run. We are meant to assume that the natural resources we consume, our water, air, food, are safe and pure, inexhaustible natural resources which exist for our consumption. But Renell’s work refuses me my blissful ignorance. It is worth noting here, too, that the spectre of environmental degradation haunts some more than others. In California, the state-sponsored Cerrell Report instructs localities and corporations that they will find the least resistance to trash incinerators and other pollutant projects in rural, poor, Catholic communities with low education levels. This policy of pushing waste onto particular
The liquid was no longer an infusion of herbs but a crossgrounds, a battlefield, melding the natural and the machine, ambiguously pure and toxic. populations, usually people of color, has the effect of abstracting environmental degradation to the mostly white upper class (perhaps why the polar bear is a more compelling battle cry for the environmental movement than the children of Flint, Michigan, who still do not have access to clean water). Renell’s work reminds us that if we want to consume art in Berlin from a smorgasbord of international artists, we need to understand the way that events like Berlin Art Week erase the continual harm done to communities across the globe. Renell offers the spectator a choice. Drink the tea, or refuse it—after all, the residents of that Finnish forest don’t know whether the herbs are still edible. Accept the reality of contamination in consumption, or try to resist the harmful effects of natural resource extraction. Has Renell violated our trust? Why did we trust her in the first place?
LIFESTYLE
ARTS&CULTURE
Two Voices Carry Lucius Gives an Enthralling Performance
By Elena Renken illustrated by Miranda Villanueva Moving as mirror images, the frontwomen of Lucius face each other and sing into the same microphone. Their voices fuse and collapse into one as they feather through sprawling melodies to reach soprano notes clear as glass. Doubled and echoed by background singers flanking them, Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig take on the form of each other’s reflections. The two women appear magnetized, mimicking each other to produce a recursive flow—far from mechanized, their movement in sound and space is all the more enthralling for its human intentionality. Lucius appeared at Columbus Theater on Friday night to sing from their album Nudes, released earlier this month. They are far from the lighthearted musicians I watched years ago, spinning in sunflower-yellow dresses and singing from “Wildewoman”, “She’s gonna find another way back home / it’s written in her blood oh it’s
written in her bones.” Following their initial album Wildewoman, the band released Good Grief, an album shot through with growing pains and littered with song titles like “Gone Insane” and “Almost Makes Me Wish for Rain.” They were vagabonds, centering themselves within their earnest searching. Letting their voices rise and fall in the song “Madness,” they sang, “My friend is running in her wedding dress / she left her gifts behind / I’ll never figure out just what we’re trying to find.”
less mellifluous but more cathartic. Draped in gold and black for the Nudes tour, the band offered newly focused tracks with unprecedented solemnity and thoughtfulness. Lucius’s wanderlust and infectious yearning persist in their most recent album, but they are veiled with restraint. The stripped-down acoustic set draws more focus to the many forms assumed by their voices: The singers erupt into full-throated arcs of sound in some songs and offer wandering whispers in others.
Their voices do not exist in isolation. “We sing songs that have two hearts, two minds,” one said between songs. Matching gold necklaces glimmered over their chests. “When we sing together, we create a voice that’s a third thing.” For its latest compilation, Lucius incorporated tracks from its previous albums, shaving down and intensifying their earlier work. The reimagined “Tempest” is jarring next to the easy flow of the original, upending the simple harmony to draw in disjointed vocals. The new song’s softer edges leave room for the discomforting notes, becoming
The vinyl edition of Nudes sold at the show was ornamented with miniaturized versions of the duo’s faces, replicated dozens of times in an array that spills outwards toward the rec ord’s perimeter. The design was inspired by the zoetrope—a spinning device that let viewers peer through slits to observe snapshots of sequential images, creating the illusion of movement before motion picture technology brought us the movie reel. Whirling Wolfe and Laessig’s faces into a blur, the design evokes the same hypnotizing pull as the band’s mirrored performance and their nearsynchronous singing. Any shifts from this unity serve as a stark contrast. Though Lucius’s harmonizing ranges from subtle to striking, even these deviations don’t reflect Laessig or Wolfe individually. You can try to trace their voices back to the separate singers, matching deviations in tone to the shapes of their lips, but you’ll never have more than a guess. Their voices do not exist in isolation. “We sing songs that have two hearts, two minds,” one said between songs. Matching gold necklaces glimmered over their chests. “When we sing together, we create a voice that’s a third thing.” The mystery of this confluence encircles the duo with an unfamiliar and alluring presence, allowing them to offer a unique impression. Both soft spoken and forceful, they provide remedies with their united arching voice. In the final track of the album, “Goodnight, Irene,” Lucius leaves listeners with a lullaby, the blown-out audio grating against their intimate vocals. Uplifted by its acoustic style, Nudes engenders equal parts of calm and catharsis with its newly symphonic songs. In a political moment that evokes both concordant screams and desperate cries, Lucius projects a carefully constructed sound that bleeds strength into its listeners. “Our greatest hope and dream is that you will take something from this,” one of the singers said. “Love or peace or tranquility or laughter.” But their music has lost pieces of its youthful optimism. Haunted by the need for soothing and empowering effects, their newest tracks provide a more complicated comfort. Breathing new life into Tempest from their first album, they leave a weighted reminder: “Temper into tempest / washes off the madness.” Since the band’s formation less than a decade ago, Lucius has carved their music to its core. Wolfe and Laessig speak to each other, breaking slightly from their melodious synchrony and leaving a deeper resonance than ever before.
march 23, 2018 5
ARTS&CULTURE
Sad Spring Break Forever XXXTentacion Gives Us More Questions to Answer Written by Julian Towers Illustrated By Miranda Villanueva I probably just don’t understand politics, so feel free to email my editor, but dating back to Marx or whoever started it, the quest to formulate a single, radical theory of art hasn’t done much more than unify a bunch of contradictory ideologies. Like, for example, how can so many people be functionalists? Take Marcel Duchamp, a total nihilist who famously punked the avant-garde by submitting a urinal to their snooty exhibition room. That guy was saying a lot of things, but his “good art is useful art” bit is the bedrock for some pretty dissimilar movements—such as AIDS-era club survivors who celebrated disco as practical, utilitarian music. (Life is short, and you can dance to it!) I don’t understand how an asshole ironist, who died having mocked progressives everywhere, could end up making the same anti-elitist argument as a group of basically sincere, communist homosexuals in the eighties. And you know what? Lil Pump doesn’t really get it either. Over the last two years, that’s what I most admired about the short, single-minded, is-it-even-rap-music born from South Florida’s DIY Soundcloud scene: it was art so populist that it essentially declined to be political. Lyrically puerile and deliriously repetitive, these songs really only had one use—to rile you up—and they valiantly refused to incorporate any element that might weigh down or distract from this goal (verses consisting of more than hooks, hooks consisting of more than three words, words consisting of meaning, mixing that enabled one to actually hear any of the above, etc.). It was a denial of all the hard-fought genius that made rap a dominating cultural contender, which even when it was “dum,” had at least always sounded expensive. What you were left with was art that carried all the punkish, back-to-the-shack signifiers of revolutionary music, but with a dopey grin peaking out where the ideological motive would normally go. In an interview with Noisey, Smokepurrp defined his scene’s philosophy as “ignorance,” and that sounds about right. It was functional music without a middle ground; you could use it or you could ignore it, but it was impossible to just think about it. Recently, however, one of the scene’s key figures, Broward County’s XXXTentacion, often referred to as X, has been stretching the thoughtless confines of the scene he birthed—and not without some contention. Time and distance has revealed his song “Look At Me!”, recorded in 2015 when he was still 17, to be the genre’s most foundational and archetypical text—probably more influential than any song with the lines “Got, like, three bitches / I'm Mormon” should be expected to be. But whereas his contemporaries continue to mine the track for its blown-out, lo-fi production and mastery of economic phraseology, X swiftly revealed his intention to stray. Ensuing singles swapped out the larynxshredding scream of “Look At Me!” for a confessional
approach—highlighting his warbly, pretty-boy, sob of a voice. This was met by lyrics tilting away from exhibitionist hedonism and towards a no-less showy brand of existential despair (“I'm so depressed/What good is sex?”). All this vulnerability came in contrast to allegations more heinous than any circling his peers, with the artist facing charges of beating a pregnant ex-girlfriend and holding her hostage. Although the incident has gone distressingly unaddressed in industry circles, with many in hip hop as high up as Kendrick still offering their cosigns, it was wielded by critics as a final evidentiary brickbat, implicating the entire Florida scene. Meanwhile, the tortured dualism of X’s persona took on its ultimate expression, as is often the case with pop-stars, in his celebrity hairstyle—a bundle of stalky corn-rows, symbolically dyed half-black and half-blonde. Still, for all the muddy waters, his music still clings to the clarity of use that signifies all of Florida Soundcloud. Last year’s debut album, 17, a bruised, half-formed collection of acoustic balladry, began with a spoken word track called “The Explanation.” A kind of ‘love-me-or-leave-me’ manifesto, it promised listeners that the album “would cure or at least numb their depression,” but only if they were “willing to accept [X]’s emotion and hear [his] words fully.” That X should demand special engagement from such a notoriously unthinking audience was read by many in terms of ego and insecurity, but the move, in truth, was rather confident. By making his art a package deal with his tainted personhood, X was staking a bet that his “genius” (his term) could outweigh any ethical baggage—that the music was powerful enough to function. Whether that’s true was a question I intended to answer with last weekend’s despairing follow-up— an untitled work with, amusingly, a question mark for an album-cover. It began with “instructions” telling me that with careful listening the album would “open” my “mind,” creating a bond I might “listen to anywhere.” Always one for a challenge, I placed in my vision an image of X’s abused girlfriend to keep steady as I moved from location to location (as per X’s advice). If the album were truly successful, I might see her and shrug. To its credit, the sounds of Question Mark, as the untitled album is referred to, are indeed evocative. Taking it outside to the reliably depressing landmarks of my everyday—sushi restaurants and cans of diet Dr. Pepper lodged in the snow—I was satisfied with the album’s ability to mirror its surroundings. Some of that is low effort—it’s no trick crafting such hoary, monochromatic synthscapes—but Question Mark also makes unexpected counterpoise with its ambitious use of guitars. Fitting for an artist whose listed inspirations include Nirvana, Papa Roach, and the Fray, the album ultimately wears its influence in its rock instrumentation. In bombastic moments,
“...I was worried that even the potatoes would not be able to stand her, and the potato harvests would diminish.” —Bianca Stelian, One Minute Early 3.23.17
“And in that moment, I was no longer a mere child— I was a Rubik’s Cube god.” —Kathy Luo, The Joy of Rubik's Cubes 3.23.17
6 post–
they recall the soaring electric-line sound Mike Dean has developed for Kanye West in songs like “Hold My Liquor” and “Wolves.” When X adds an icy, subliminal atmosphere, he does so in the fashion immortalized by The Cure on their albums Faith and Seventeen Seconds—angular guitar lines slither through his tracks like snakes in water. It’s all an endearingly reverent, even pie-eyed homage to musical heroes, and it left me wondering if the listener was even remotely as valued. Not that I require constant innovation, but the truth is the surface sonics on Question are too slick and visible to allow personal connection, whereas the comparatively rudimentary “Look At Me” had me rushing to read different writers interpret its unrecognizable, bass-boosted Mala sample. Here, only one response seems possible—the height of functionality, sure, but not in the way X would appear to intend. Forging an intimate sonic relationship is therefore unlikely, which leaves most of the heavy lifting to X’s words. His stated goal on Question Mark was to “provide comfort”—a mission that sees X peeking out behind episodes of terminal depression (“And every single year/I’m drowning in my tears again) to reassure us of its illusory nature (“Ooh ahh/ love yourself”). This wisdom often draws its authority from X’s first-person reminiscence, but sometimes involves something like character roleplay, as on the lush and gently trap-inflected breakout hit “Sad!” Here, X enters the mind of a tentatively suicidal girl (“Who am I?/Someone that’s afraid to let go”), though his insights stop well short of the penetrating (“I’m sad, I know, yeah / I’m sad, I know, yeah”), and mostly recall the annoyance of high-schoolers who claim they can control their dreams. Such is the supercilious nature of Question Mark’s insights; the “learned survival skills” come off like unproven guru junk—dispatches to the helpless passed down from a plane only X can reach. Finding no comfort, I thought back to one classic album also mired in depression: Joy Division’s Closer. There, trapped in the specificity of his own torment, frontman Ian Curtis explored the outer limits of his tortured soul with little hope of a solution (indeed, he famously took his own life following the record’s completion). Enduring X’s attempt to invade mine with his “remedy for a broken heart” (“Mix a little bit of weed/with a little bit of cash”…thanks) helped me understand why one album eased my mind and the other didn’t: I fundamentally don’t care how much you think you know about me. It’s inevitably less than I know about myself, so show me what you understand about yourself. If it’s a lot, maybe I can place my trust in you as a fellow human traveller. X’s confidence that he might outpace his ethical baggage by ignoring it suggests he has a lot left to learn before he makes useful music. But, also, like, who cares. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ARTS & CULTURE
LAYOUT
Saanya Jain
Managing Editor
Chief Livia Mucciolo
a
Josh Wartel
Gabriela Gil
FEATURE
Section Editors
Ro Antia
Managing Editor
Celina Sun
Nina Yuchi
Jennifer Osborne
Marly Toledano
Jacob Lee
Section Editors
Julian Castronovo MEDIA
Anita Sheih Kathy Luo
DESIGN
Claribel Wu
Sarah Saxe
Samantha Haigood
NARRATIVE
Anita Sheih
Managing Editors
COPY
Annabelle Wood-
Chief Alicia DeVos
ILLUSTRATION
ward
Zander Kim
Miranda Villanueva
Pia Mileaf-Patel
Amanda Ngo
Phoebe Ayres
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Divya Santhanam