The Wake, Issue 8, Spring 2014

vol. 13 | issue 8 March 4 - March 17

Animal testing is a cat-tastrophe!

Muddsuckers to Ditch Muddy Brand p. 6 Animal Alternatives p. 11-13 Q&A: Adam DeGross p. 16-17

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©2013 The Wake Student Magazine.

All rights reserved.

Established in 2002, The Wake is a fortnightly independent magazine and registered student organization produced by and for the students of the University of Minnesota.

The Wake is published with support from Generation Progress/Center for American Progress (online at www.genprogress.org).

Production Production Manager

Editorial Editor-in-Chief

Sondra Vine

Alyssa Bluhm

Graphic Designers

Managing Editor

Sondra Vine, Eric Berry, Kelsey Schwartz, Brittany Long

Art Director

Sam Gordon

Web Assistant Brittany Long

Business Manager Cooper Henckel

The Wake was founded by Chris Ruen and James DeLong.

Q&A: Adam DeGross p. 16-17

Muddsuckers to Ditch Muddy Brand p.6

Voices Editor

the purpose of the Wake is to provide a forum in which students can voice their opinions. opinions expressed in the magazine are not representative of the publication or university as a whole. to join the conversation email abluhm@wakemag.org.

The Empty Piggy Bank p. 15

Gophers Take Over Sochi p. 4

Cities Editor Grace Birnstengel

DISCLAIMER

Whats Inside?

Artistic Healing p. 5

I'm Looking Forward To... p. 18 Love Comes in Many Forms p. 19

The Struggle to Strike p.7

Bruce Ferguson

The Other 35 p.8

Falleno p. 20 Video City p. 20

Sound & Vision Editor

Winter Driving Advice p. 9 Actor, Artist...Cannibal? p. 9

As Simple As a Brick p. 21 Your Newest Destination p. 21

Sochi Problems p. 10

Paintings to Marvel At p. 22

Animal Alternatives p. 11-13

3 Reviews p. 23

Kelcie McKenney

Web Editor

www.wakemag.org

Justin Miller

Sam Lindsay

Social Media Manager

The Wake Student Magazine 126 Coffman Memorial Union 300 Washington Avenue SE Minneapolis, MN 55455

Sara Glesne Courtney Bade

Online Editor Lauren Cutshall

Faculty Advisor Shayla Thiel-Stern

Distributors Shawna Stennes Morgan Jensen Sara Glesne

This Issue Cover Artist

Photographers Kathryn Dougherty, Sam Lindsay, Justin Miller, Nick Theis

Illustrators Eric Berry, Brittany Long, Peter Mariutto, Lianna Matt, Jennifer Yelk Contributing Writers Grace Birnstengel, Lauren Cutshall, Kirsten Erickson, Herbert B. Ferguson-Augustus, Sara Glesne, Cooper Henckel, Thomas Hvisdos, Haley Madderon, Lianna Matt, Kelcie McKenney Luke Michaels, Justin Miller, Alex Nelson, Erik Newland, Zach Simon, Nick Theis, Sarah Valli, Alex Van Abbema, Kristen Wangsness

“So how ‘bout that weather?” In Minnesota, it’s a common conversationstarter, similar to “how’s it going?”

But when the weather drops to -20 degrees (without wind-chill) or it snows 14 inches, the weather becomes epidemically prevalent in our conversations. We all gripe, moan, theorize, fantasize, and state-theobvious about whatever weatherrelated predicament we are currently subjected to.

We spread rumors about how we heard it’s supposed to be -60 with wind-chill by tomorrow or how we’re going to get another 9 inches overnight. We create elaborate scenarios where by some miracle, all the snow will melt and it will be 70 degrees by tomorrow. All in all, we become consumed by the weather.

I’ve always wondered why this is. Are we just trying to make the weatherinduced pain worse in some sadistic manner? Or is it our way of coping through conversation? I’m no sociologist (if you are, you should definitely do some research on this), but I feel like it’s a woeful mix of it all.

While it’s something everyone can talk about because we’re all suffering from the arctic tundra called Minnesota, maybe winter weather is just an egotistical phenomenon that gains strength from hearing its name in daily conversations. So, just in case that’s true, let’s all try to avoid all weatherrelated conversation crutches in an effort to make it to spring by August.

Justin Miller Managing Editor

13:8

Cities Minnesota Gophers Take Over Sochi

Many U of M alumni (mostly hockey players) competed in this year’s games

By Alex Van Abbema As both the U.S. women’s and men’s hockey teams took the ice during the 22nd Winter Olympics in Sochi, plenty of University of Minnesota connections did as well.

Former Gophers and current siblings Amanda and Phil Kessel provide a particularly interesting story. The two dominated on the ice in Sochi hockey, as Phil Kessel tied for first in total points scored with eight, and Amanda Kessel tied for second overall in Olympic points with six.

Amanda Kessel had a phenomenal career as a Gopher hockey player. Last season, she led the nation in scoring and became only the fourth player in NCAA Women’s Hockey history to reach 100 points in one season. Phil Kessel didn’t have a spectacular career as a Gopher, but has carved out a nice career for himself in the NHL, as he has had three seasons with more than 30 goals.

Amanda Kessel, Megan Bozek, and Noora Raty were all part of last year’s unprecedented 41-0 championship hockey season. Bozek competed in all 41 games last year and had a school defensemen record of 57 points.

Last year Raty had a successful season as goalie, finishing her career as a Gopher with both the career and single-season record for shutouts.

Kessel and Bozek were both on the ice for Team USA, while Raty and another former Gopher, Mira Jalosuo, skated for their native country, Finland. The Finnish team finished in fifth place at Sochi.

Martin was a part of the 2002 National Championship Gopher Hockey team, while Wheeler is famous for his game-winning overtime goal in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association’s Final Five tournament back in 2007.

This is Wheeler’s first Olympics, while Kessel competed in Vancouver and Martin played in the last two Olympics.

The men’s team had a strong start in Sochi, winning their first three games and finishing first in Group A. They did, however, have a disappointing ending at the Olympics, losing a thrilling 1-0 semifinal game to Canada and losing a blowout to Finland in the bronze medal game, 5-0.

A fourth alumni and member of the men’s hockey team, Thomas Vanek (New York Islanders) played for Austria who lost in the qualification round.

The only non-hockey competitor for the University of Minnesota, Tabitha Peterson, is a member of the women’s curling team. Unfortunately for Peterson, her team finished in last place.

As the players move on from the Sochi experience, there is definitely some disappointment for both teams in regards to their results. But the U of M alumni who skated (and curled) for their respective teams contributed to some great memories and made their school proud.

UMN ALUMNI OLYMPIC HOCKEY STATS Women’s Team Name

Goals

Assists

Amanda Kessel

3

3

Megan Bozek

1

4

Gigi Marvin

0

1

Jordan Lamoureux

0

5

Monique Lamoureux

3

0

Mira Jalosuo (Finland)

0

1

Men’s Team

Other USA women’s hockey players, Monique and Jocelyne Lamoureux, both skated for the University for one year before transferring to North Dakota.

Name Paul Martin

0

0

The USA women’s hockey team had a great run at Sochi, but lost in a heartbreaking, overtime, gold medal game to Canada. They did, however, leave Sochi with a silver medal.

Phil Kessel

5

3

Blake Wheeler

0

1

Thomas Vanek (Austria)

0

1

On the men’s side, three alumni played hockey for Team USA. Paul Martin, an Olympic veteran currently playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins was joined by Phil Kessel (Toronto Maple Leafs) and Blake Wheeler (Winnipeg Jets).

4.

march 4 - march 17

JENNIFER YELK

Goals Assists

CITIES Artistic Healing

A local non-profit is bringing out the artist in kids

By Sarah Valli

In the heart of the Warehouse District in downtown Minneapolis beats an organization that is altering the future of the city’s next generation. Next to the Fine Line Music Café, The Wyman Building serves as the headquarters for Free Arts Minnesota. Free Arts is an organization that actively provides a unique way for children and teens to express themselves creatively through art.

Free Arts Minnesota strives to bring dignity back to children that have been stolen of it. Children who have undergone sexual molestation, verbal abuse, neglect, exploitation, among other degradations, are those who the organization fights to provide an open and safe space for. Free Arts creates a safe place where the children, volunteers, and families can all come together to make a community of positivity and relational growth. It is a space that gives a voice to children and helps them create new definitions of self-worth.

though there are occasionally themes behind the art, the main goal of creating art is self-expression and connection. Volunteers do not need to be a modern-day Picasso in order to be a part of the organization; even those who are artistically challenged can volunteer. Since the heart behind the volunteering aspect of Free Arts is for an adult to reflect to the child how amazing they are, the only qualification is anyone who is passionate about working with youth.

“The experience helped me out a lot in getting me to step outside my U of M bubble.”

nizations that Free Arts is partnered with include People Serving People, The Jeremiah Program, St. Anne’s Place, Sojourner Project, and The Bridge for Youth, among many others. Volunteers work with a coordinator to match a site with their own personal interests and availability.

Hannah Strickland, a student at the University of Minnesota, has volunteered through Free Arts Minnesota.

Strickland volunteered at the Jeremiah Program in St. Paul and did crafts with 3-4-year-olds.

“The experience helped me out a lot in getting me to step outside my U of M bubble. It let me become more present,” Strickland said. “The atmosphere is open, so it really helps you to just open up and have fun.”

Since working to uplift the next generation requires community involvement, Free Arts Minnesota partners with almost 30 different organizations to unite under a common dream and turn it into a reality. Some of the orga-

“Free Arts Minnesota strives to bring dignity back to children that have been stolen of it.”

The organization began as a dream in Los Angeles to bring a form of positive self-expression for children as well as to demand positive relationships with adults for children who had experienced abuse. Carolyn Sargent was a woman who saw the value of expression through art as she used it to voice her own frustrations that accompanied her hearing loss. Sargent came together with aspiring art therapist Elda Unger, and the two provided art workshops that gave children the opportunity to build relationships while expressing themselves through art. Thus, Free Arts for Abused Children was born. Later, the organization was brought to Minneapolis as Free Arts Minnesota.

A key component in Free Arts is the relationships that are built between the children and the volunteers. Each week, a group of volunteers come together and do crafts with the children. Groups of four to five people organize the craft for the week and do the craft with the kids. Al-

www.wakemag.org

5.

Cities Muddsuckers To Ditch Muddy Brand

Como’s coffee shop closes doors to reopen under new name

By Alex Nelson

Despite its conspicuous location on the corner of Como and 15th, Muddsuckers’ dingy ambiance and dated décor keep it from standing out. Soon, though, southeast Como’s grungy gem of a coffee house is getting a much-welcomed polishing.

Owners Andrew and Lisa Ply, in collaboration with friends and business partners Kel Nelson and Rebecca Power, closed the shop’s doors for two weeks at the beginning of the semester to begin implementing an overhaul to the store, one that they have had in mind for months.

“We want to give students a better opportunity to come and feel welcome and part of the community,” Lisa Ply said. “Everything has been a collective work in progress between us four.”

The changes and renovations span everything from an interior design spruce-up to an improved menu, and even shiny new bathroom facilities. Power pitched décor and color ideas to Andrew and Lisa Ply; Nelson built neat new barn wood display fixtures. “Rebecca is such a machine. She installed the new tile lining the bar in two days,” Lisa Ply said.

“It’s been a real organic process. It’s never going to be done.

We’re always going to keep improving and adding things,” Nelson said. Things like a brand new high-quality espresso machine, which will be placed near the front counter rather than tucked away behind the register. “We want to be able to talk to the customer more.”

The store will be trading their uninspired recipes for exciting new plates. “In order to market the product, we needed to improve the product,” Nelson said.

has great potential. In an effort to improve accessibility, the store will offer waffles “to go” in hopes of attracting students in a rush looking for a solid breakfast before they run across the street and hop on the bus to class.

Muddsuckers will swap out the dull coffee they are used to serving for crisp, bright java, roasted locally at Dogwood Coffee. Their baristas are all being retrained with an emphasis on quality and experience—latte art is a must. They are planning on working with local farmers and co-ops to serve fresh ingredients and connect with the community.

“It’s not just about protecting our business, it’s about protecting the community.”

The downfall of Muddsuckers was “just about everything,” Andrew Ply regrettably admits. “Overall, we offered pretty average products. All our food, we got it from Sam’s Club.

We used a microwave,” Lisa Ply said. “Literally everything will be better.”

“We knew the location was good and it could work, it was just a matter of finding out how,” Andrew Ply said. As part of the new store environment, they plan on offering their recently acquired lounge area extension as a place to showcase art and musical talent. They want to host events to help the shop come alive, and they envision the store becoming a cornerstone in making the Southeast Como a friendlier, warmer environment.

Lisa and Rebecca bounced ideas for new recipes off of each other, working to perfect new strudels, make better waffles, and offer a wider array of choices. The entire system of ordering food will be reworked, in favor of a more customerfriendly experience. They have been taking notes from other cafes respected among the community, hoping to adopt an experience similar to that of The Bad Waitress or Urban Bean.

“We were geared toward more of a specific clientele, not everybody felt comfortable here,” Andrew Ply said. “We want to provide a more customer friendly environment.”

Located at the edge of Como Ave. right off a bus stop that the highly frequented 3 route passes, the owners know the area

Two doors down, Obento-Ya Japanese Bistro is proving that a formidable and seriously successful business is attainable in the neighborhood. After receiving a positive review in the City Pages, Andrew Ply said the restaurant “can’t keep an open table. It sticks out like a sore thumb.” In a part of town ruled by absentee landlords and vacant homes and buildings, standing out is a good thing.

Muddsuckers hopes to emulate the success of Obento-Ya and introduce another glimpse of soul to the ailing neighborhood.

After the Feb. 10 armed robbery two blocks west of the store, this conception seems incredibly appropriate. “I’ve actually come to know and love this neighborhood,” Andrew Ply said.

“It’s not just about protecting our business, it’s about protecting the community.”

Brad Cimaglio, Andrew Ply’s business partner, handed the reins over to Andrew when his computer repair and tech counseling company, Skyway Techs, took off. He owned the shop for over two years, during which it developed its laid back, casual feel. That atmosphere “just didn’t appeal to everyone,” so Ply hopes to take the shop in an earthier direction.

SAM LINDSAY

6. march 4 - march 17

The store is open in a “low-key” fashion for business once again and plans to turn their grand reopening into an “event,” showcasing their new image with a fresh name, Black: Coffee and Waffles. The staff is eager to share their new brand with guests and to refocus their efforts toward quality, convenience, and community.

VOICES The Struggle to Strike

By Cooper Henckel

It’s easy to forget, especially in a world inundated by anti-union messages, that unions serve a critical purpose.

A nuanced understanding of the ‘union’ and its role in both American history and capitalist societies shows that unions serve as a representative body of otherwise unrepresented workers. Labor can only be represented in the form of a union and the union’s best weapon is the Strike.

Historically, Minneapolis and St. Paul haven’t had many strikes. In St. Paul, the teacher’s union, which was recently threatening strikes and even moved to bring a strike authorization vote to the union, was able to use their weapon to protect teachers’ interests.

The teachers wanted to opt out of federal testing, establish more secure, smaller class sizes, and increase pay for experience and education.

Other issues involved expanding support staff (librarians, physical education teachers, counselors, and other noneducator staff outside the administration) and universal access to Pre-K education.

St. Paul Public Schools was largely opposed to everything they put forward. That’s not surprising. The school district, while not itself a capitalist agent, does have to operate within a system that doesn’t value the funding of education, with a tighter budget, and to benefit its own interests economically.

The conflict isn’t surprising, but it’s easy to forget that it’s the school district, not the union, that has the majority of the power.

But the district also respected the union and their rights to unionize. This, more than anything else, is what should be taken away from the now resolved situation.

The struggle was resolved over the weekend before the Feb. 24 vote on strike authorization. The details of the contract are expected to be released shortly and will likely involve some give from both sides. The contract,

while certainly important to the teachers, the district, the unions, and the people of St. Paul, is not what should be taken away from this exchange.

Instead, a look at the process of union negotiations and the district’s response is significantly more interesting when looking at the issue broadly. Instead of strong-arming one another, the two groups engaged in passionate negotiations for nine months, the union representatives able to present the teachers’ case while they were able to stay in the classroom and teach students. Both sides wanted what they thought was best for the schools. This wasn’t a battle between a brutal factory owner and the oppressed proletariat, but a conflict between the labor and knowledge that powers education and the power structures that maintain it. What we as the observers should note is that both sides engaged the other with respect for their position, intentions, and saved the harsh discourse for the negotiation table. The conflict was between these two parties and they engaged one another in a healthy, constructive way.

On its face, that might seem contrary to what took place.

After all, the union threatened a strike vote, the district didn’t budge, and the negotiation took nine months.

What part of that was healthy and constructive? Moreover, we don’t know the full details yet—how can anyone know that the deal wasn’t an overt domination by one side or the other?

The power to strike is the only real power a union has.

Their labor is the only weapon workers have against their employers. Strikes come at an immense risk to the workers—a risk which far outweighs anything the employer risks in allowing a strike to happen. The workers can lose their homes, their families, their careers, and, if history is any measure to look back on, their lives. Striking workers have been killed, coerced, attacked, beaten, and otherwise publically attacked with the support of the state.

In states where unions have been viciously attacked, like in Wisconsin under the leadership of Gov. Scott Walker, these possibilities seem likely. Without the right to unionize, organize, and strike, workers have no protection, no power, and no worth. They are empty, meaningless numbers put to work. The famous Pullman Strike in 1894

ERIC BERRY

is one of the more famous union assaults in which 30 union members were killed and 57 were injured. President Cleveland used the army to attack strikers. Although unsuccessful in achieving their goals, many of the labor innovations of the mid-20th century traced their public support to the coverage of the Pullman strike.

So when you read about the negotiations between labor and capital, look to the St. Paul struggle for an ideal model.

Publicly respectful, openly engaging, and ultimately resolved without the threat of violence, the union was able to exercise its power and the school district was able to keep itself open. As other teachers’ unions in the state struggle with their own negotiations, hopefully the victory in St. Paul is a herald of settlements yet to come.

www.wakemag.org

7.

VOICES The Other 35

The media needs to correct its portrayal of domestic violence

By Haley Madderom

Mandy Matula, Kira Steger Trevino, Anarae Schunk—perhaps you recognize the names of these women. They have all made thousands of headlines this past year as victims of horrible murders committed by their intimate partners, but let’s steer this conversation in a different direction. Why don’t the other 35 Minnesota domestic homicide victims, documented by the Minnesota Coalition of Battered Women last year, make the cut?

Eddie Sole was also murdered by his girlfriend last year. He was beaten and hidden in a freezer for weeks before he was found by police. Search his name on CBS Minnesota and a mere two articles covered the incident. Eddie, like many male victims of domestic violence, carries a different stigma.

Dealing with clients, Redenzke-Field has noticed a trend of heterosexual male-victim/survivors discounting their abuse as “not a big deal.” she said, “Male victim survivors dealing with any of the issues that we work with…have a whole other set of what society says they can and cannot be victims of—generally nothing.” She was quick to emphasize that, “in reality it doesn’t matter what size either partner is, either side could be abusive to the other” despite what society seems to think is acceptable abuse.

It is an undeniable fact that domestic violence homicides in the public eye seem to fit a common theme: a young, white woman unknowingly falls in love with psychopath, goes missing for months, and is found dead. Search Mandy Matula on the CBS Minnesota news database and you will get over 100 hits.

“It’s an easy way to set up a pretty, young, white woman within the media and have them be the victim… It’s an easy person to align yourself with as a person watching,” she said. “But if that victim was an addict or homeless, [we] set up an ‘us and them’ mentality. When you can’t relate to those people, it becomes a lot easier to distance yourself.”

8.

march 4 - march 17

Domestic violence needs to be recognized as a consistent issue.

The Minnesota Coalition of Battered Women has been recording domestic violence homicides in the state for 25 years. The 38 victims documented this year, which include men, women, family members, children, and friends, are not an anomaly.

There have been many years when the death toll has exceeded 40 victims. What, then, is our perception of domestic violence and how can the media make it more representative?

According to Redenzke-Field, the media needs to stop representing domestic violence as an unusual occurrence or simply a murder. There are so many emotional, physical, and verbal abuse cycles that ultimately lead to violent ends. “Leaving the relationship doesn’t always make someone safe,” she said. “[These homicides are] one more reason why some people don’t.”

Each homicide case last year was different. Some attackers committed suicide after first killing their partner—all bodies accounted for, a clear-cut event. Perhaps some victims’ families were not open to talking about the issue and little could have been said. Despite these factors, the press could certainly step up its efforts and work to better portray these victims across all demographics and as victims of domestic abuse. Flipping on the morning news, no one wants to see death, but if these stories are not shared equally, will domestic violence be taken seriously?

Other names such as Panhia Yang, Perry Paulson, Nerissa Shaw, and Geraldine Kading did not attract the same level of attention. Panhia was Hmong, Mr. Paulson was in an intimate relationship with a man, Nerissa was an alcoholic and a woman of color, and Geraldine Kading, impaled by a crossbow, was 69 at the time of her murder. Apparently these victims were not stereotypical enough for the public to acknowledge.

Becky Redenzke-Field, a legal advocacy coordinator for the Aurora Center does not seek to discount any of last year’s tragedies, but is compelled to argue that inequality of media coverage is a strategic choice.

international community is also well aware of the prevalence of female violence. In 2010, the United Nations established UN Women, with the purpose to promote gender equality and empowerment of women in the world.

LIANNA MATT

Despite this stigma, female victims have historically been primary targets of domestic abuse. According to The National Domestic Violence Hotline, the only relationship violence center in the United States that provides victims with national access to service and shelters, from 1994 to 2010 “4 in 5 victims of intimate partner violence were female” in the United States.

In 2013, 81 percent of Aurora Center clients were female. The

The Aurora Center provides a 24/7 helpline every day of the year for concerned persons and victims of sexual assault, relationship violence and stalking. This applies to those affiliated with the University of Minnesota and Augsburg. Call 612-626-9111. Walk in services, support groups, and legal advocacy are also provided. ANYONE can get help. If you are not affiliated, you will be directed to a service that can meet your needs.

VOICES Winter Driving Advice

JUSTIN MILLER

it gets shot out the other end. Whatever you do, don’t just keep spinning your wheels—you’ll sooner get rear-ended than get a grip on bare ice.

A few helpful tips from a Minneapolis native

Here in the land of ice and snow, the melting and freezing causes more problems than just potholes in the roads. Windshield wipers, car doors, and even your gas tank can freeze solid. If your door is frozen, you can just push it from the inside to get it unstuck. If the keyhole is frozen, then you’ve got a problem. You could end up breaking the lock or the key.

By Erik Newland

As you probably noticed, winter isn’t over yet. Before the sun comes out again, the snow is going to come back with a fury. Every time it snows in Minnesota, some of us end up in ditches, veteran and newbie drivers alike. It’s inevitable.

Many of you come from places where they shut down the whole infrastructure due to two inches of snow. Allow me to help you out with some winter driving advice, so when it snows next it won’t be your car on its roof.

First, you have to be ready. I know most of you cannot afford snow tires, but even on your meager college student budget, you can afford an ice scraper. If you’re going to go farther

than the St. Paul campus you should probably bring a shovel and a wool blanket, so you don’t freeze to death if you’re stranded overnight.

Because you don’t have snow tires, you’re going to end up spinning your wheels on a patch of ice. You can use sand or a floor mat to get traction back. Just be careful what you put under your wheels—it might take out someone’s shins when

Actor, Artist... Cannibal?

For those of you who skipped all this advice because you think you know what to expect—don’t underestimate the beast that is a Minnesota winter. Don’t freak out and skip driving entirely, though. Just keep your calm while out on the roads. Every once in a while, if it’s safe, test your brakes to see if they’re still working. Basically, assume everything that can go wrong, will, and don’t panic.

Try not to die, and best of luck!

ZACH SIMON

Shia LeBeouf exemplifies celebrity culture today

By Zach Simon

idea to make a YouTube video about him being, among other terrifying things, an actual cannibal?

Even Stevens, Transformers, and Holes. All (arguably) classic pieces of entertainment. Common denominator: Shia LaBeouf. Yet, how did a once-beloved star become such a twisted media icon?

It doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to understand the strange obsession surfacing in the media about LaBeouf’s antics. It also says a lot about what modern society calls entertainment. With celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, and Lady Gaga showing that they enjoy a big gulp of crazy juice with their morning Wheaties, there has been a prevalent shift in what really captures the public’s attention.

Say what you will, but the guy has always had some kind of strange voodoo charisma, probably due to over-exposure to those crystal skulls. It’s incredibly puzzling that an actor that taught us that even average guys can get Megan Fox decided it’s a good idea to put a paper bag over his head stating that he is “not famous anymore.” While acting as the sole exhibit in an art show. That he put on.

We live in a world where Stanley Yelnats has become Stanly No-Pants. That annoying younger TV brother Louis Stevens that everyone loved to hate began appearing naked in Sigur Ros music videos in the middle of 2012 and starring in movies named after sex addictions. When did someone get the

Labeouf has most recently become involved in a plagiarism scandal that loosely connects another man’s graphic novel with an eerily similar short film created by Mr. LaBeouf.

After an absurd amount of apologizing, the self-proclaimed anti-celebrity has started an art exhibit which simply contains himself sitting in a room wearing a paper bag over his head. His unorthodox attempts to reconcile himself have caught a huge amount of media attention and he has somehow became even more famous because of these incidents... despite his alleged goal of relinquishing his status.

It’s these kinds of contradictions that make me worry about our entertainment needs. We give celebrities like LaBeouf exactly what they want in exchange for our own entertainment. In our own pursuit of twisted entertainment, we have gone almost as crazy as the celebrities that we love to poke fun at.

www.wakemag.org

9.

VOICES Sochi Problems

Americans are stuck on the Soviet image

By Kristen Wangsness

An estimated 3 billion people worldwide watched the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics opening ceremonies. An estimated 3 billion people saw a technical malfunction as one of five majestic light-up Olympic rings failed to open, leaving the international symbol a little lopsided. Within days, a satirical article that claimed the man behind the ring failure was found dead at Putin’s orders saturated American media.

don’t get to see the average Russian so all they know is what they see in movies or TV,” Axelrod said. “I want people to know that Russia is not all full of communists.

Stop thinking in the past. I really wish that less movies portrayed Russians in villainous roles so that people stop prejudging us. Though Russia has many faults, it is a country with a lot of amazing people and should be thought of as such” The general perception of Russia needs to adapt to an understanding of the country that brought the world television and Tchaikovsky. Russia is sending a message, loud and clear, to the world. The United States should listen.

The United States in general still clings to the idea of Russia being a place where a man could be executed for a minor technical mishap, magnifying anything about the Games that fits into that erroneous image. A Twitter account, @SochiProblems, garnered attention for compiling any and all inconveniences or complications in Sochi. While so much attention was paid to the flaws in the Games, not as much was being paid to the side of the Olympics that Russia is trying to highlight: the redefinition of Russian culture.

Soviet Russia no longer exists. The Russia that is hosting the 2014 Winter Olympic Games has experienced incredible change. It has rebounded from the political overhaul and economic depression that occurred after the Soviet Union’s dissolution. The Olympics is a wonderful way for them to share, in their own terms, what they have become with the rest of the world. Victor Sadovinchy, the Rector of Lomonosov Moscow State University, said:

Russia is not just about vodka and fur. Russia has a strong culture that unites people.

“The case here is not about a grand sporting event, but also about the construction of infrastructure on a huge scale... The Olympic and Paralympic Games are giving the city, the region and the entire country a brand new image, and facilitating changes in self perception of people of all regions... Little by little, this project is enabling us to unveil a new image of Russia.”

The Sochi opening ceremonies featured a theatrical show in which the entire history of Russia was symbolized. Every region of the country was represented and the Russian Cyrillic alphabet was recited with a meaningful symbol at each letter, from notable artists and landmarks to the combine machine and Russia’s first moon rover. In the display, a little girl released a giant red balloon, representing the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 before landing on the luminescent blue sphere of the future. The program was divided into seven sections, or seven dreams that gave recognition to their rich culture, acknowledgments to both historical achievements and hard times and a nod to future aspirations.

Out of the many facets of this cultural display, the United States decided to magnify a lighting malfunction and fabricate a murder. Russian students who were asked about the Sochi Olympics expressed frustration at the stereotypes the United States holds about Russia.

“I do feel that a lot of Americans have an inaccurate view of Russia. They think that Russia is all about drinking and fur coats, and though this is true, there is more to us than that. With all the #SochiProblems going on I feel they are being harsher than necessary,” Alyssa Axelrod, a U of M student, said.

The same students are excited for the world’s eyes to be on Russia and are hopeful that the exposure will improve the inaccurate perception of their country.

“Russia is not just about vodka and fur. Russia has a strong culture that unites people. It has beautiful architecture that is not seen anywhere else in the world. The majority of Russians do not hate or resent Americans. However, Americans BRITTANY LONG

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Animal Alternatives?

By Justin Miller

From the U of M to the world’s research institutions, technology, not animals, will be the future for advances.

A man suspended himself above the lobby of Diehl Hall for days in protest. A now-defunct student group campaigned against it. Members of a resistance movement broke into University of Minnesota research facilities. Another man suspended himself above the lobby of Diehl Hall, a building at the heart of the research practices he opposed.

U of M researchers faced harassment and death threats. The FBI led investigations, security was heightened for research facilities, and, eventually, the turmoil settled.

That was all about 15 years ago.

What did it all have in common? A staunch moral opposition to the use of animals in research. It’s long been a contested topic and with any such debate it has its radical streaks in organizations like PETA and The Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

Some argue it is undeniably indispensable for advances in human health, and others believe it to be morally reprehensible. Increasingly, however, many are now simply wondering if, and when, technology will make the use of animals in research unnecessary. In the middle of this black-and-white polarization is a pragmatic attempt to balance ethics and compassion with medical advancement and our modern realities.

A large portion of animals used in research are within our universities, including the University of Minnesota. Many are now pushing for an institutional shift in how research is conducted in this setting. With increasingly complex research merging with technological advances, the goal is simple: less animals, more effective alternatives.

www.wakemag.org

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A World of Research with Animals The use of animals in research is not new; the practice traces back to ancient Greek, Roman, and Arab societies. It has, however, become far more pervasive over the last century: an estimated 100 million animals are now used in research worldwide each year.

Today, cosmetics and toxicity testing on animals is what most people conjure when they think of animal research, but that’s only one way that animals are used.

Animals are used in a wide range—though primarily medical—of academic fields of research, from genetics to drug and vaccine development. Some research on animals is used purely for the expansion of scientific knowledge, and isn’t necessarily applicable to humans. But in biomedical research animals are most often used as research models in order to better understand human biology and disease, essentially producing a condition could parallel humans.

Animal rights activists claim the majority of research using animals does not translate to useable human application, resulting in a huge waste of resources. However, advocates for animal use argue that such research has consistently allowed for significant medical advancements for humans. Some of the most important vaccines, medical procedures, and treatments in recent history are based off animal models, according to the Foundation for Biomedical Research, an organization that actively promotes animal use in research.

Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) is required for each institution that uses animals in research; within the U of M there is the Research Animal Resources (RAR) program.

“I believe that in order to have effective medical research programs, you have to have an effective compliance program,” Dick Bianco, a U of M associate professor of surgery and program director for the Experimental Surgery Services program, said. Bianco was once a U of M institutional official for animal care through IACUC and uses animals in his current work.

“You really have to understand the rules, and why we use animals and how we use animals.

Only the people who are properly trained and have the proper attitude are allowed to go forward. That’s part of what the IACUC does—set the ethical tone for this,” Bianco said.

All research using live vertebrates must be reviewed and approved by IACUC before moving forward. The committee’s task is “to determine whether a project’s societal benefit justifies the use of animals and whether procedures are designed and conducted in such a way as to minimize animal pain and distress,” according to Cynthia Gillett, the institutional veterinarian for the U of M’s RAR. With around 400 new proposals to consider each year, that’s a tall order. According to a 2012 USDA report, 3,135 of all the U of M’s 5,000 research animals were subjected to some degree of pain or distress. The majority of those animals received some sort of pain reliever.

Animals became the model of choice for many lines of research throughout the 20th Century, yet it remained largely unregulated. However, in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which regulates the treatment of animals used for research purposes, including dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, and non-human primates

Use at the U Being a highly ranked research university, animal use in research at the U of M is extensive.

Compared with other Big 10 institutions, it is one of the largest users of animals. Across a broad range of departments, centers, and institutes, the U of M currently uses about 6,500 animals for research and instructional purposes. Rats and mice are not included in these numbers, though the U of M currently uses roughly 7,500 rats and 185,000 mice for research.

*Data used includes only these most common animals used. Not including horses, goats, cows, chinchillas, squirrels, birds, or amphibians. **Except for 15 cases, dogs and cats were used for veterinary purposes and were returned to shelters, humane societies, and owners after.

Under this intensive regulatory system, animal use in research is monitored from beginning to end. The U of M must purchase animals from federally approved dealers in order to avoid using unethically obtained animals. Every day, RAR veterinarians monitor and care for all of the animals that are currently used in U of M research. Nearly every aspect, from each species’ cage size to the animals’ transportation, has specific requirements that must be followed. When a researcher no longer needs an animal for their research, the animals are typically euthanized.

A Matter of Funding Today, standards call for a clearly beneficial and carefully monitored purpose for each animal used. Since federal regulations began in the ‘60s, a stringent institutional framework has become the norm for universities’ use of animals in research. It consists of a dizzying, multi-leveled regulatory system: the AWA is enforced by the Department of Agriculture (USDA); an Institutional

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Providing prestige alongside ample amounts of outside funding, research is the cornerstone of the U of M. Specifically within the numerous medical fields, a steady flow of funding and grants is essential for productive research.

Clerc offers the “organ-on-a-chip” as an example of a new, tech-driven alternative that could replace animals and have tremendous implications on how drug testing is conducted. The organ-on-a-chip is essentially a microchip made of living cell cultures that can simulate the functions of a human organ. This could allow for accurate and precise testing of how a new drug interacts with a specific organ, or even a connected system of organs, and eliminate the need for mice in drug testing.

The fact remains that animal use is still engrained in many research methods. However, research can build off of itself as it advances. Bianco, the U of M surgery professor, says alternatives are always considered.

“We search for alternatives all the time. We don’t like using animals. That’s sort of the misperception out there. We want to use a minimal number, and we want it to have direct human benefits,” Bianco said, offering the example of how medical school students no longer learn on live animals but through simulation. *Data only accounts for most consistently used species: dogs, cats, non-human primates, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, sheep, pigs.

The National Institute of Health (NIH), which invests more than $30 billion annually in medical research, is the primary source of funding for these institutions. At the U of M alone, NIH is currently funding about 700 research projects with more than $300 million.

Not surprisingly, the NIH is also the single largest funder of research using animals in the U.S. One report found that nearly half of NIH’s budget goes to research with an animal-based component. Although it’s hard to obtain a solid grasp on how much NIH money goes toward U of M research with animals, NIH’s funding database shows U of M research projects with the keyword “animal model” to include 84 projects with total funding of about $31 million.

This consistent influx of funding for animal-based research has created a research culture that’s quite dependent on the use of animal models.

“I feel like sometimes scientists don’t want to explore new options and they want to stick with what they know. Unfortunately, what they know best is animal models,” Pascaline Clerc, the senior director of animal research issues for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), said. Prior to joining HSUS, she spent 12 years in a research lab as a scientist.

“I’ve seen examples where adding 10 animals to a group doesn’t raise any issue for anyone because they don’t see the animals as animals anymore.”

Eyeing Alternatives In June 2013 the NIH announced that it would significantly reduce the amount of funding for chimpanzee research, saying that “new scientific methods and technologies have rendered their use in research largely unnecessary.” Animal rights advocates lauded the unexpected move, and many see it as a beacon for a larger institutional shift in medical research—moving away from animal models and toward new research alternatives.

“We’re kind of facing a wall where we’ve made great progress using animals, but now with the complexities of the biological system, we’re reaching the level where we can’t go past this,” said Pascaline Clerc, the senior director of animal research issues for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). “We’ve solved the simplest questions, but now remain the more complex problems. In order to be able to answer those problems, we’ll have to develop new methods.”

It’s the 3 R’s that are promoted on an institutional level: Reduce, Refine, Replace. By keeping databases with previous animal research, it eliminates the need to use animals again—that’s refinement. By combining control groups for similar research projects, that’s reduction. And with alternatives like the organ-on-a-chip, that’s replacement.

Bianco welcomes alternatives when they’re scientifically valid but sees more value in refinement. “To me, it’s probably more pertinent that we use fewer animals than animal-alternatives,” he said. The surgeon doesn’t think research on animals will disappear altogether anytime soon, because with new discoveries comes the need for new animal models. For research focusing on incremental improvements, that’s where he sees animals being needed less and less.

That’s the mindset Clerc and HSUS encourages for scientists as alternatives develop. Still, with more and more funding for alternatives on the horizon, she said, “It’s a good time for them to start thinking about how they can conduct their research without using animals.”

Most people aren’t aware of the precise research steps it has taken to reach the cumulative knowledge base and state of human health we are at today. But it’s important to consider the path it’s taken, and what the best way forward will be.

We’re approaching a crossroads for the role of animals in research, one where we have an opportunity to apply the brakes and take the exit offered or continue with the foot comfortably on the gas. It’s an intersection with no room for polarization, only pragmatism.

We’re approaching a crossroads in regards to animals’ role in research, one where we have an opportunity to apply the brakes and take the exit offered or continue with the foot comfortably on the gas. It’s an intersection with no room for polarization, only pragmatism.

Animals in Research Timeline 1796: The cow was used to develop the smallpox vaccine.

1902: The lifecycle of malaria was discovered with a pigeon.

Clerc sees exciting things in NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), which works to increase the efficiency of new treatments and tests for humans.

But NIH’s decreasing budget is a political casualty, and alternatives are not a high priority when traditional methods still call for heaps of funding. NCATS funds about $550 million in research—about 1.6 percent of the NIH budget.

“I think we need more funding for that, or we need to shift funding from animal research toward alternatives because they’re all making great progress,” Clerc said.

1956: Open-heart surgery and pacemakers were developed using dogs.

1966: The AWA was signed into law.

1999: ALF breaks into U of M facilities and releases 100 mice, rats, and pigeons.

2013: NIH announces reduction in chimp research. www.wakemag.org

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VOICES The Empty Piggy Bank Bitcoins, a monetary Wild West

By Thomas Hvizdos Bitcoins represented a gamble, a gamble on escaping financial and governmental regulation. But when the dice were finally rolled, they turned snake eyes. The Bitcoin’s value compared with the U.S. dollar fell 23 percent following scandals involving criminal syndicates and the collapse of the largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, leaving Bitcoin users baffled or broke. Yet these speculators fail to recognize that the Bitcoin is a currency flawed by design.

Most early adopters have been driven by speculation, curiosity, or ideological motivations.

It’s necessary to first understand how the Bitcoin works.

Basically, a Bitcoin is a decentralized electronic currency. It’s not backed or controlled by anyone. In the Bitcoin network, each user is represented by two “keys”—one public, one private. Your public key is what you use to get money, and your private is what you use to send it out. Everyone knows your public key, but your private is secret to you, ensuring no one else can spend your Bitcoins. That’s the electronic part. The decentralization is accomplished by a unique and complex network protocol that ensures transfers are valid.

Bitcoins are fairly niche. For example, the Bitcoin is not naturally untraceable, but it can be made so very easily.

In consequence, the Bitcoin is the currency of choice for illegal activities such as money laundering, or online drug auction houses.

Although Bitcoins benefit criminal enterprises, it really holds no advantage for the average consumer. Most early adopters have been driven by speculation, curiosity, or ideological motivations. None of these are likely to ever apply to a majority of the population, making it unlikely that a majority would ever have a reason to try Bitcoin.

But even if Bitcoin had some killer advantage, adoption would still be slow. Why? For one, Bitcoin is inconvenient.

When researching this story, I spent some time trying to buy a Bitcoin, and it was maddening. There’s no central bank, so to buy any, you have to go through a third-party exchange; I spent over an hour looking through sites, trying to find one that A) was trafficked enough to be useful, and B) wasn’t just going to immediately steal all my money.

After I cleared those hurdles, I was dismayed to find that the one I found didn’t accept credit cards, only checks and money orders. There are other ways to get a Bitcoin, but they’re incredibly complex and outside of the average citizen’s reach.

Finally, Bitcoins, by their nature, are a dangerous currency to use. Speculators jumped at the Bitcoin market as an investment, thinking the growth in its value to the dollar would guarantee returns, but that same value plummeted 23 percent in February. They are volatile. Worse still, without your private key, you can’t access or spend money from your Bitcoin account. Your money has essentially been destroyed. For a point of comparison, imagine if losing your debit card meant you lost all the money you had in the bank.

Bitcoin is also a huge target for hackers. There is, obviously, the danger of malware compromising your account info, but also present is the threat of a cyber-attack on one of the major exchange sites. Many exchange sites hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in

PETER MARIUTTO

funds, but by and large, they’re not very secure. They’re programmed by individuals, and have far less security than big banks. If one goes down, you’re not getting your money back. In the real world, the FDIC ensures that your money is safe, but Bitcoin is the monetary Wild West.

The troubling thing for Bitcoin is that none of these problems are going to disappear soon. Yet, maybe the flaws are what drive the fascination. As hackers, speculator, and criminal syndicates go toe to toe for control of the first virtual currency, Bitcoins may stand the test of time as a casino with few winners and thousands of losers.

www.wakemag.org

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Q&A Adam DeGross

Underground music photography as a labor of love CROWBAR

and it helped me a lot to have something like that.

The Wake: What was the most interesting show or event you ever got to document?

By Sara Glesne

For Adam DeGross, taking photos isn’t a livelihood: it’s just a part of his life that makes sense. Over the past nine years he has captured hardcore, punk, and metal basement shows, street punk culture, and just friends of his living their lives in the Twin Cities.

He was recently nominated as a finalist in City Pages’ best music photographer contest. The Wake sat down with him to talk about how he got started as a photographer and where his art has taken him.

The Wake: What sparked your interest in photography?

Adam: I just started taking photos when I was 18. I’m 27 now, literally, as of yesterday. So it’s almost been 10 years.

God, that’s crazy. My ex-girlfriend talked me into buying a camera, like a little point-and-shoot one and I started booking punk shows when I was 17, so I just started bringing it to the shows that I was booking and I would use those pictures to tell people, “Come to these shows! Look at how much fun everyone’s having!” It was right when Myspace was getting going so they kind of took on a little more of a life of their own, other than just showing them to other people from different states [outside Minnesota].

The Wake: Over the years, is there anything really important you’ve learned about improving yourself as a photographer?

Adam: Yeah, just keep on. It’s been my one constant thing and I try to tell people just keep on doing it. Like my old photos, they just sucked. And now I’ve realized if I didn’t go to every show and always have my camera they would still look the same. It gave me something to really put my effort into

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Adam: I was randomly driving down the street and I had my camera in my car and I saw that Brother Ali was outside for the Occupy movement deal and there were all these cops around. I was like, what’s the deal? I just pulled over and then I ended up getting photos of him being arrested for civil disobedience, just because I was driving and I had my camera on me. That was really interesting and fun, or well, not fun.

But I got right in it and it was really weird to be right there at that time.

I got to travel Europe twice doing photos, and Eastern Europe was really crazy. I toured with a band that brought me along, Al & the Black Cats. I always feel happy when my camera doesn’t get broken at a crazy show. When I was younger, people didn’t really pay mind of me much, so people would shove into me when things got crazy.

The Wake: It seems like you mostly do black and white photography. Why is that?

Adam: I used to really like doing color because I used to do photos more of the street punk, Mohawk-like St. Paul stuff a lot. I’ve been going to shows for almost 15 years now, and so that was what I grew up on, back when that stuff was really big. I liked how that to people who aren’t in the punk scene that’s “punk,” you know? But then when I started going to house shows or the Medusa [a former DIY music space on the West Bank], my flash, I started to realize, could be abrasive to people. So I would intentionally not use it, but the lights were always terrible. So there would be red light and there’d be lowlight and this and that, and so that’s where kind of my more grainy, black and white style came from— just to cover up the fact that I didn’t want to bug people and colors wouldn’t show and I would have to figure it out.

The Wake: Tell me about releasing your book last year.

Adam: I used to work at a warehouse unloading trucks. A guy I worked with, we started to talk about photos. I had never really shown people outside of the punk rock community many of my photos and he was like, “Oh, wow. These are really cool. You should do something with them.”

At that time I had been contacted by the Andersen Archives at the University of Minnesota. They had wanted me to compile my best stuff, so I already had my best-of photos from that and then my friend who worked at that warehouse was like, “You should make a book.” So, I made a Facebook invite for the book release and the gallery exhibit before I even had anything, so I was like, “Wow, now I actually have to do it.” And then it picked up steam and people actually wanted the book, so I self-published it and I’ve sold 400 so far. They’re all gone now.

The Wake: What was the name of it?

Adam: It’s called Pay Attention. I might do a second one eventually, but it’s expensive. I never did a Kickstarter or anything like that. I put it all on my credit card and was like, let’s go!

The Wake: Now with your photos in the Andersen Archives, how does it make you feel to be a sort of historical photographer?

Adam: I guess it is true. It’s really weird to say that. I probably wouldn’t even be let into the University of Minnesota, you know? I think it’s really crazy. I think that actually made my parents a little more proud of it. I mean, I don’t really get paid to do this. I’ve never really taken money. It’s been kind of a labor of love.

If I died you know those pictures would probably be in there longer than me. It’s crazy to think about.

The Wake: Can you talk more about what it means to do this as a labor of love, not for money?

Q&A

THE MELVINS

DEM ATLAS

Adam: When I did do my exhibit, I charged like, $25 for a print and they were all one-of-a-kind varieties. I didn’t reprint them.

And I even felt weird, like, is $25 too much? I don’t know…

It’s just such punk rock, and the community has been such a big, big thing for me my whole life. I’ve been into it longer than I haven’t been into it. I wouldn’t like to take money from my friends or community. I’ve just always felt like it’s a much bigger thing than me and I like to help with my little part by showing people or capturing it for years and people can look at the photos. It’s more a labor of love.

The Wake: Why do you choose to take photos of the shows you do?

Adam: I’d rather take photos in a basement of a band that nobody’s heard of, that maybe I’ve never even heard of, but there’s a way bigger energy there than if I would go to you know The Myth and take photos of Ke$ha. Which would be fine. You know, I went and saw Ke$ha, but I didn’t take photos of it because I just don’t feel like it’s something that I stand behind. I’d rather go out of my way to do that than work to get a photo pass for some bigger band. Because, who cares? Those photos will come and go. They’re just disposable. Unless somehow you got a photo of Rihanna falling off stage. I’d be into that. I’d take a photo of her like, on the ground. That’d be tight. But you know, a photo that could be the same night and there could be a punk band playing and I could take a photo that someone could do a front-flip into the crowd and that could live on longer than me because it represents something. People feel that more than just a stale photo of some celebrity.

The Wake: Could you tell me about Siege Booking?

Adam: Like I said earlier, I’ve been booking shows for years.

And at the tail-end of it I helped do the Medusa. I used to do The Beat, those all-ages shows. I do the VFW. I used to do The Eclipse. Now I work doing stuff at Triple Rock. I’ve just been doing shows for years. My partner [with Siege Booking] Jimmy Claypool plays in a few bands, like False and In

RIFF RAFF

Defense. I’ve been booking shows for years so I know how to promote shows. I know how to talk to booking agents. So we were like, “Why don’t we just help bands tour?”

The Wake: Any shows you’re excited about coming up?

Adam: Extreme Noise’s anniversary shows. Los Crudos is playing. They’re one of the headliners and Martin, the singer of that band, he’s like a huge inspiration to me for photos.

He does what I do, kind of. But his stuff is just phenomenal He’s been doing it for years and years, traveling with different bands. He does it all on film and he teaches it. And as we talk online it’s been cool to be like, here’s my book. You know, I bought yours so check mine out!

Adam: Stick with it and just keep doing it. If someone says you’re wrong, then just don’t listen to them. I mean, listen to how stereotypically punk that sounds, “Don’t listen to people!” But just do your own thing. If someone back in the day had told me my photos were bad I might not have kept on doing it. But luckily I’m part of a community where people really push each other. Even though they were bad, now they’re good. I never went to school for it, and now I just do it. If you want to get into bands or book shows, just do it. Someone has to. Why can’t it be you?

All photos from degross.tumblr.com

Los Crudos was a band for a while and then they started Limp Wrist, which is an all-gay hardcore band and that was kind of their thing because back in the day it was really all these tough guys used to love Los Crudos and then they came out and it was like, “This is stupid. I don’t like this anymore.” Then they became Limp Wrist and they came out so flamboyant. Like they come out in cheerleader outfits. That was the first show I ever went out to.

The Wake: What advice do you have for photographers?

TRIBULATION

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Sound & Vision

SAM LINDSAY

Manchester Orchestra GRACE BIRNSTENGEL

It is a real rarity for me to enjoy a certain artist for long periods of time. A good chunk of the bands I listened to religiously in high school are cringe-worthy to me now. One day I’m sure I’ll look back on my current taste and scoff.

Yet through my musical “growth,” there’s always been artist that I’ve never quite grown out of: Manchester Orchestra.

No, they’re not an orchestra. ManOrch is a 5-piece from Atlanta fronted by the oh-so-emotional and oh-so-bearded Andy Hull.

The band’s fourth full-length album drops April Fools’ Day on record label Favorite Gentleman and I am practically beside myself with excitement. With each album, Manchester Orchestra has evolved but kept to their easily-recognizable roots, and their newest single “Top Notch” tells me that this will likely continue to be the case.

Every Manchester Orchestra album thus far has come with almost perfect timing in my life. The lyrics, the overall subject matter, and the general album vibe—it has always made sense. As cheesy as it sounds, I feel that I’ve grown up with this band.

Lucky for me, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the band twice, once opening for Brand New at First Avenue in 2008, and a second time headlining the Cabooze in 2011.

To top it all off, Manchester Orchestra is soon hitting the road with some of my other loved artists, Balance and Composure and Kevin Devine, and the tour stops here in the spring. Find me sobbing at the Skyway on May 14.

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Dark Souls 2

Release date: 3/11/14 on Xbox 360 and PS3 ERIK NEWLAND The first Dark Souls (2011), spiritual successor to the PS3 exclusive Demon’s Souls, acquired its cult following because of its unyielding difficulty and in-depth lore. Japanese developer FromSoftware decided to make a sequel to build on the success of the original, and announced Dark Souls 2 back in December 2012. I put eighty hours into the first playthrough of the game, and I’m psyched to have a sequel that will hopefully live up to the first.

At its core, Dark Souls is an action role-playing game in a dark fantasy setting. The narrative is rich, yet told in piecemeal fashion, leaving much to speculation. Its core genius comes from the tension it creates. The enemies are relentless and deadly but rarely unfair. An abundance of hidden treasure and traps reward only the cautious and intrepid.

FromSoftware has promised to make the sequel just as difficult, which excites me to no end. In a sea of video games that hold your hand throughout, it’s refreshing to have an experience like the Souls series—one that challenges us with the motto “prepare to die” and wishes us good luck.

Veronica Mars movie KELCIE MCKENNEY

Have you ever loved a show so much that when it ended or was cancelled you honestly felt like a part of your soul was ripped from you? Enter Veronica Mars, a show about the snarkiest young detective to ever solve crimes and emanate sarcasm that was cancelled far too soon in 2007. Hearts were broken when it ended. But when writer and director Rob Thomas decided last year to start a Kickstarter for a V Mars movie, thousands of fans were ready to foot the bill.

91,585 fans to be exact. Myself being one of them.

Breaking Kickstarter records and raising a total of over 5.7 million dollars—more than twice the asking budget—the heightened excitement of this upcoming movie was already becoming palpable. Fans have waited seven years for a real ending to Veronica Mars, and they are finally going to get one on March 14. The film even won MTV’s Movie Brawl for most anticipated film of 2014, beating the Hunger Games, Amazing Spiderman, and Hobbit franchises.

Fans love Veronica Mars. They love it enough to take money out of their own pockets for it to be made, they love it enough to still be rooting for it seven years after cancellation, and they love it enough to be shaking in anticipation for it to come out in theaters. The time has come. We’re ready to see Veronica Mars. Right now.

Ingrid Michaelson COOPER HENCKEL

A snappy, quirky girl from the Shore, how can you not love Ingrid Michaelson? The better part? She’s got an upcoming show in Minneapolis at First Ave on April 26th. An organic sound, playful lyrics, and more heart than I can handle— what isn’t worth being excited about?

She’s among my favorite singers in the world! So far this year she’s released an awesome single (with an even better music video) called “Girls Chase Boys.” It’s only March and she’s already set a pretty high standard for the rest of the year.

Fortunately, she’s Ingrid Michaelson, so what is there to fear?

Not a damn thing. Things will only get better from here and I absolutely, unquestionably, edge-of-my-seat can’t wait to see what’s next.

You can be damn sure I’ll be at the front row of her show, screaming and shouting like a rock groupie. Inappropriate?

Maybe. Going to happen? Certainly.

Sound & Vision Jack White LUKE MICHAELS

Kimbra & Lana Del Ray ALEX NELSON

Jack White is the busiest man in the music business. Thankfully, this means that 2014 is going to be a fruitful year for White fans like myself. Earlier this year, White drew attention by announcing, “I’m producing two albums this month, and finishing them. One of them is mine,” on the message board of his label, Third Man Records. This was great news for fans waiting on the sequel to his critically acclaimed 2012 LP, Blunderbuss. I expect the album to be a mixed bag of raging garage-rock sprints and slow-burning folk tunes, similar to his polarizing debut solo album.

Two of my favorite voices in the amazing genre of solo female pop are due to release a second album in 2014: Kimbra and Lana Del Rey.

Also worth noting: one of Jack White’s numerous side projects, The Dead Weather, will also be releasing a series of singles throughout the year, followed by a full album in 2015. Jack White is basically immune to disappointing an audience, so I have no doubt that the follow-up to his masterpiece, Blunderbuss, and whatever else he decides to produce in his spare time will become strong additions to his extensive body of work and I’m going to be the first in line to see what comes next.

These come in the form of Instagram snapshots of her in the studio with familiar names (David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors) and juicy interviews where she spills vague details of the direction she’s taking this second record. Vows took the eccentric songstress five years to make and I’m hoping that working under the industry standard of 12-24 months between releases doesn’t cramp her style. Yet I have full faith that Kimbra will deliver a powerful and satisfying follow up to her incredible debut.

Kimbra’s 2011 Vows expertly blended rhythm and soul to create a fresh and unique sonic landscape for a pop album.

It’s been three years and I still cannot go a few weeks without a full listen of the record. Ever since she finished touring those songs Kimbra has been dropping progress reports on her next record.

After the release of Born to Die and Paradise, Lana Del Rey has enjoyed a snowballing success amongst everyone from trendy hipsters to typically untrendy teen girls. If you can suspend distaste for her whiny croon and anti-feminist lyrics, you will succumb to the irresistibility of her sultry vocals and sweet-as-honey presentation.

Like many, I’ve overplayed the majority of her discography, so her recent contribution to the Maleficent soundtrack, a chilling cover of “Once Upon a Dream,” has whet my appetite for her upcoming album Ultraviolet. To the singers’ dismay, the Internet got its hands on a clip from the record’s “Black Beauty,” a swinging ballad throwing back to the droning gloriousness of “Video Games” affirming Del Rey’s ability to crank out slow, tranquilizing, dark lullabies. After the leak, though, the singer felt uninspired and lacked motivation to wrap up her third album. Let’s hope she buckles down and puts her pipes to good use to offer another brilliant record.

Love Comes In Many Forms: The Weisman Art Museum’s Love Tour

By Lianna Matt

During Valentine’s Day week, love was in the air, and the Weisman Art Museum was not immune to its reach. The museum offered its Sweetheart Sale of 20 percent off in its shop and a tour focusing on all of the love stories found in the museum’s collection. After all, the word “love” has many meanings.

The first stop on the tour was the museum itself. The tour guide talked about how Frank Gehry, a strip mall designer, had used his free time to pursue his true love—manipulating form and shape of traditional structures. Love is dreaming.

Love is life-altering.

The guide also recognized wife and husband power couples like Georgia O’ Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz in relation to O’Keefe’s painting, Poppies. His photography might have influenced her painting style in the way she centered her magnified subject matter. Love is discovery.

Later on, the group rounded the corner and saw the ever-present form of William Weisman, father of Frederick R. Weisman, immortalized in copper. While William permanently sits in the Weisman, the tour provided an opportunity to stop and stare at the intricate detail—the veins in his hands, the pores on his face—that visitors might just pass by normally. In those details, guests saw a child’s love for his father. Love is tenderness.

The most romantic idea of love on the tour was Marsden Hartley’s painting, Adelard the Drowned, Master of the “Phantom.” Alty Mason, the portrait’s subject, was the foster-brother whom Hartley had loved all of his life.

While no one can verify whether or not Hartley’s love was requited, their relationship ended abruptly when Mason died in a fishing accident. He paints Mason as a complex man, comfortable while working with his hands and with the heat of the sun, but still kind, denoted by a flower tucked behind his ear. Love is life-altering.

Most of the pieces that the love tour touched on would also fit naturally in a generic tour of the museum. And yet, some-

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how, with the tenuous emphasis on love, the hot chocolate and heart-shaped cookies that were offered before and after the tour, and the spirit of Valentine’s Day itself, the tour was charming. The Weisman’s celebration of love may have stretched the idea of love in every way possible, but the tour still provided a nice jaunt into the world of fine arts before Valentine’s Day with a friend or a sweetheart. Love is art.

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Sound & Vision Falleno

Why Jimmy’s jump to PrimeTime will be a success

By Lauren Cutshall We all remember it. It wasn’t pretty. Promises about The Tonight Show were made and broken and Conan was left out of the club. Though he recovered from the The Tonight Show debacle with a new nickname, the Obama-esque “Team Coco” propaganda and an eventual show with TBS, it’s not an experience we want to repeat in 2014.

For starters, Fallon ditched the desktop cards in favor of a Mac long ago, appealing to today’s current techsavvy generation.

Yet it’s official: 2014 marks the end of Jay Leno’s time on The Tonight Show as he hands it off to the beloved Late Night star, Jimmy Fallon. Though he may seem new to the scene compared to his CBS counterpart David Letterman, Fallon

has made his mark on Saturday Night Live in addition to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and has his very own ice cream flavor—Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack anyone?

But besides ice cream, what is it that Fallon has that Leno doesn’t? For starters, Fallon ditched the desktop cards in favor of a Mac long ago, appealing to today’s current tech-savvy generation. And while Leno’s “Headlines” segment is favored by many as it points out editing blunders and newspaper typos, the idea of an entire segment based on a news medium many people aren’t in tune with doesn’t seem to make much sense. Fallon, on the other hand, shares the online community’s tweets in a segment called “Hashtags,” keeping the show both technologically current and fan-based.

In addition, Fallon brings in a sketch-comedy background giving each show a Saturday Night Live vibe rather than the more

Video City Finds a New Home in Seward

By Nick Theis

A show-and-tell for local moviemakers, Video City, debuted at the Seward Cafe a few weeks back. The Feb. 16 local movie marathon promised “a lot of hope for the future,” said local artist Joe Berns, who served as Video Jockey for the night. Viewers at Video City were offered a round of short films ranging from music videos to cartoons, to an old University of Minnesota instructional rap. Local video artists were offered a place to show off their works, which were very diverse, but were all produced here in Minneapolis.

Thus the name Video City.

It started with a 1986 adventure film where a man meets a mushroom tree. Next they showed a cartoon cornucopia of animated kid’s drawings such as “refrigerator happenings” (a heartbreaking symphony), “the friendly enemies” (done in the Jurassic style), “poison puffs” (an anticigarette PSA), “the death of the last survivor” (featuring WWII style German bombers), and perhaps the best of them all, “the Revenge of Space.”

Local artist’s music videos frequented the Video City screen —groups like Teenage Moods, Rupert Angeleyes, Grow Fangs,

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and Todd Luffa, as well as episodes from the long running Minneapolis public access TV show PRIORITY. PRIORITY features primarily local musicians, but superimposed on top of its musical show casing is a unique video montage. Tracks by Michael Gaughan (from Brother and Sister, also known as Ice Rod) were screened, and there was even a surprise performance by the U of M law school of an electronic video tour (produced by Bill Bruce in 1988) where a dweebish law student gave a walk-through in rap format about the law library.

Between video segments, there were moments when things went off the video DJ digital deep end, only to resurface peacefully into, for instance, a long and quite fast-forwarded 26-mile freeway journey from Lakeville to Minneapolis, captured near sunset sometime mid-summer.

Berns described the Video City event as “kind of like bringing your living room to your front door.” In other words, it brought the comfort and creativity of home video

stunted stand-up background of Leno. Fallon relies on his own characters and sketches which rarely fail whereas Leno has to rely on the mishaps of politicians and celebrities events each week. Fallon’s repertoire also shows promise as his former appearances include movie roles, television characters, SNL Weekend Update anchor, and the host of the 62nd Emmy Awards.

Perhaps a great deal of Fallon’s draw and success comes from his sidekick band, The Roots. As a three-time Grammy award winning band, their well-known status contributes to further success. We can only expect good things from the future as Questlove and the band follow Fallon to The Tonight Show.

So who is taking Fallon’s place on Late Night? Talk-show newcomer but veteran comedian, Seth Meyers leaves a 13 year stint at Fallon’s alma mater, Saturday Night Live. Meyers also plans to bring yet another SNL alum, Fred Armisen to lead the band as he continues shooting his successful television show, Portlandia.

All in all, 2014 brings necessarily changes to the Primetime and late night television as NBC’s weekly line up is shuffled again. Surely, there are countless hilarious sketches, interesting guests, and quality music waiting in the wings. to a common public space. Most of the video came out of a projector hooked up to a small computer, but some made it up to the big screen the old-fashioned way. Local moviemaker Trevor Adam showed the entire audience of the Bare Bones puppet show, face by face in fast forward, on a Super 8 film reel.

The evening covered everything from Space Discos to old Minneapolis tourism propaganda, and ended with live music sets to re-appropriated and remixed film reels (mostly Disney cartoon mash-ups).

The next Video City will be on March 19, again at the Seward. Maybe you have something to share? To submit, contact Joe at josephberns@icloud.com.

Sound & Vision As Simple As a Brick How to build up an idea, Lego style

By Herbert B. Ferguson-Augustus

A hollowed-out plastic brick with four studs on the top was patented in Billund, Denmark, in 1939. Billions of bricks later: town houses, skyscrapers, death stars, cities and a recent feature length film that has grossed nearly $200 million have all been built off that single idea. The Lego Group built a multibillion dollar business on a single idea: everything needs building blocks.

Entrepreneurs everywhere took note.

In odd contrast to their successful capital ventures, the villain of The Lego Movie is named Lord Business (voiced

by Will Ferrell). In the movie, Business is bent on destroying the Lego

Your Newest Distraction The Bravest Warriors

By Alex Nelson

If you’re a fan of Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time—or of quality cartoons in general—checking out Pendleton Ward’s latest creation The Bravest Warriors is absolutely imperative.

Set in the year 3085, The Bravest Warriors seems like a fusion of the best elements in Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Futurama. At just 17 seven-minute episodes, a run through of the series (available on YouTube) is a bite-size treat perfect for procrastinating whatever essay you’re supposed to be writing. I’ve watched the series from start to finish four times this week alone.

universe. It really is quite a different story from the Lego Group’s reality.

Today, Lego continues to grow in the entertainment industry without really diverging from its base product: building kits. While Disney expanded into TV networking during its slump in the eighties, Lego continued making building sets. Despite Hasbro owning more than 50 distinct toy lines, Lego surpassed it in terms of market share and company value in 2013.

Lego philosophy has branched off into business consultancy, architecture, education, technology, theme parks (Lego Land, anyone?), video games, and now cinema.

Business is bent on destroying the Lego universe Consumers seem to latch onto Lego because it facilitates their creative process, rather than predetermining it. It might seem like a no-brainer at first, but consider companies like Hasbro and Disney that focus exclusively on creating entertainment for people, instead of helping consumers create for themselves. Lego has not only profited by facilitating innovation, but has built toy lines based on its consumers’ creativity. erie of characters and their outrageous adventures through space. The plot is ridiculous and seriously complicated (delving into meticulous time travel and picking the most intricate inner-workings of the psyche), but it’s also rife with innocent quips of humor including classic Pendleton Ward-style mispronunciations for the hell of it and moments of haphazard sass.

With characters like Ralph Waldo Pickle Chips (with his following of hamsters) and Impossibear (a perpetually angry bear), the show never fails to entertain. My personal favorites are JellyKid, a tiny little blob of jelly that can produce a slice of bread at will accompanied by an adorable “pshew” sound, and Catbug, a half-cat half-lady-bug who’s naïve childishness and exploratory

For example, The Lego Movie takes stop-motion film, a technique used by YouTube filmmakers, and brings it back to the big screen for the first time in years.

Lego isn’t alone in its strategy of building off of already existing innovation in its user pool. Google built its empire on creating a way to access vast vaults of information. Apple sustained its consumer base by opening app creation to the public. Facebook has done the same with social networking. In selling a method of production as opposed to the product itself, these companies created and sustained a consumer culture for themselves that can stand the test of time.

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There is a reason that in the movie (spoiler alert), Lord Business wields a super weapon capable of freezing the universe. It’s a warning that business might kill all innovative projects if entrepreneurs try to control their creations. Instead, submitting the creative process to consumer control sustains it. nature crushes even my jaded soul. Voiced by an actual little kid, when he introduces himself to the rest of the characters with an excited “I’M CATBUUUUUG!” my world crumbles.

But don’t write the show off as a cutesy, Dora the Explorer-style kid’s show. There are moments of serious hilarity definitely aimed at an older audience. At one point, a character describes fornication with the euphemism “having sassy moments.”

Impossibear’s grumpiness is humorously unmatched, and the way he asks “what’s with all this racket while I’m trying to make a mix tape?!” gets me every time. Perhaps I relate all too well, or maybe that type of out-of-the-blue, random humor is “in” now.

The Bravest Warriors has a lot of it, and it works really well.

It’s not that I have disgusting chunks of free time to waste in a YouTube black hole of cartoons, it’s just that this show is that addicting. Like a package of Oreos, it’s sugary sweet, geared towards children, but enjoyed largely by hip teenagers, and finished before you even knew you started.

Maintaining all of Adventure Time’s charming quirkiness, The Bravest Warriors chronicles the humorously random menagTHE-MYSTERY-CASE-FILES.WIKIA.COM

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Sound & Vision Paintings to Marvel At

Superhero portraits of women battling breast cancer

By Sarah Valli

As I walked into the Roen Room in Boynton, my eyes were instantly drawn to a painting of a giant, lime green woman wearing goggles. Her wings were stretched across the canvas, and her jacket provided a resting place for her companion: a clockwork mouse. As I was contemplating what type of superhero this could possibly be, the portrait’s creator Barbara Porwit rushed in excitedly. Her eagerness to tell each painting’s story with exact detail demonstrated her passion and intricate involvement with the subjects.

Porwit uses her art to empower brave women who are battling breast cancer Barbara Porwit’s dream is to help people discover the superheroes that dwell inside of them: to take the forgotten power and dreams that everyone has and bring them to light. Porwit uses her art to empower brave women who are battling breast cancer. In her paintings, Porwit depicts women as whatever superhero they envision themselves as.

As we walked from painting to painting, Porwit explained the unique stories behind each woman. We began with Jill, depicted as a disco-dancing diva deflecting breast cancer bullets. We went through: Jei, the alchemist; Lisa, the rising phoenix; Katy, the powerful wonder woman; Anne, the ruby runner; and ended with Suzi, the Honorable and Joyful Lady Justice accompanied by her sidekick goose. As Porwit finished telling me Suzi’s childhood story that contributed to the incorporation of the pink laser gun in the painting, I felt like I knew each of these dynamic women personally and each had gained my admiration.

The project began at a time in Porwit’s life when many of her acquaintances were diagnosed with breast cancer.

Within two weeks time, she heard that at least 10 women she knew had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Cancer is a big scary word that people hide from,” Porwit said. “It wasn’t real for me until then. I realized that I’m only one mammogram away from having it happening to me.”

After a long period where she was void of inspiration, one of Porwit’s good friends encouraged her to submit a piece for the state fair. After much contemplation, Porwit decided that she would paint her son Zander as Spiderman.

“There was something about the energy. You know that he

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knows he can do it—get the bad guy and save the world…

We all have that superhero feeling inside of us when we’re young, but somehow it always ends up leaving us. The question is, how do we get it back?” said Porwit.

It seemed like a simple idea, but to Porwit the meaning was much more than a child in a costume. That painting began something far bigger than she ever imagined. After this, Porwit was eager to meet with the acquaintances she had who were diagnosed with breast cancer to paint them in a way that would help them realize that they were heroes.

Porwit saw that one of her acquaintances, Jill, already began viewing herself as a superhero before Porwit ever mentioned the project to her. Jill had begun making a superhero song of the day on a playlist that would encourage her and remind her that she could be victorious in her fight against breast cancer. Once they began talking about the project, Jill decided that her superhero would be a dancing queen with a tiara. Her hospital bands would be made into golden cuffs, while her love for the band Abba would be shown through her disco ball bra.

looking in a mirror, the woman is empowered by her radiant victory through the battle of breast cancer and the pieces of herself she has gained throughout the journey.

“Honestly, it’s a lot about resilience and courage. These heroes are about the victory of the human spirit,” said Porwit.

The portraits are now gone from Boynton, however, once a month one will be featured as Superhero of the Month at the Hematology/Oncology clinic on campus. There will be an accompanying “Draw Your Own Superhero” interactive project for the patients and family members at the clinic.

On Feb. 28, the Breast Cancer Awareness Association (BCAA) hosted a gala fundraiser called “The Breast Party in Town” at the Metropolitan where three of the paintings were featured. A commissioned portrait was auctioned to help raise money for scholarships to their BCAA Educational Conference that happens in the fall.

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“I’m like a sliding scale; I need to go where they go,” Porwit said. “This is a place where they can play. I meet them where they’re at with images that tell their own individual stories.”

The project continued with more of Porwit’s acquaintances, and finally extended to a woman Porwit had never met. She feels that each woman was greatly impacted by this experiment in positive thinking, where the dormant superhero finally could arise and become a reality. The journey that the woman has undergone shines through her superhero counterpart, and, as if

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KATHRYN DOUGHERTY

3REVIEWS Morning Phase

Band of Horses: Strip Things Down

Sea Change, Pt. II: In a good way

By Luke Michaels

By Kirsten Erickson

It doesn’t take long to make the connection between Morning Phase and Beck’s acclaimed 2002 folk endeavor, Sea Change. As the bummed-out violins fade in for the first time on “Cycle,” it is obvious that Morning Phase is indeed the long-prophesized Sea Change sequel.

Band of Horses, the Seattle quintet of well-bearded men, has managed to build an impressive career that includes a Grammy nomination while still maintaining their indie street cred—most people only know that song about that funeral, right?

Recently, like every great alternative band before them, from Nirvana to Wilco, the group has just released a live album, Acoustic at the Ryman, recorded at—you guessed it—the Ryman in Nashville this past April.

Stripping down music from a band that is known for its loud, fuzzy guitar parts and hard drums is no doubt risky, but the result is a fresh take, for the most part, on the songs that fans have come to love. Among the standouts of the album are “Detlef Schrempf,” which showcases a bare, slow-building piano melody, and “No One’s Gonna Love You,” featuring a sparse acoustic guitar and a melancholic vocal by Ben Bridwell.

That being said, not all of the band’s songs benefit from this instrumentally naked treatment. “The Funeral,” the song the band is most famous for, seems to lose the energy that made it likable in the first place now that the signature electric guitar crescendos are taken out. Lack of instrumentation aside, Bridwell’s voice commands the attention as the standout element of the album. He delivers clear, heart-on-his-sleeve vocals that are often lost in the band’s usual loud dynamic.

In all, Band of Horses has managed to deliver a live set that mostly enhances the songs that have made their career so successful.

While an acoustic album of old hits probably won’t gain many new fans, maybe it’s for the best to remain a hidden gem.

Katy B’s:

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Little Red

By Alex Nelson Before Ellie Goulding, Jessie Ware, or Disclosure emerged from Britain’s dance music underground, Katy B cut them a straight path to the top of the charts with her 2011 debut album, On a Mission. This effort ditched the recently popularized Auto-Tune and introduced solid powerhouse vocals to borderline dub-step production, resulting in rave-worthy, diva-driven, excellent pop music.

Her 2012 follow-up EP Danger was an optimistic glimpse of the evolution of maturity and quality that was coming our way. Even more exciting, though, were the recent blips of vocal home-runs Katy’s been batting our way. It was hard not to be stoked for February’s release of her sophomore effort, Little Red.

The album begins with one of its most brilliant tracks. On “Morning,” Beck’s heavenly cathedral-verb vocals set the dazed and confused tone that pervades the album’s collection of immersive folk jams. His use of soft and subtle electronics on the song almost seems as natural as his acoustic strumming. The album’s stellar lead single, “Blue Moon,” maintains the album’s strong themes of love and loneliness and stands as Morning Phase’s strongest single, while “Wave,” the album’s darkest moment, haunts through its use of elaborate strings as the sole accompaniment to Beck’s chilling drone. The ever-present topic of human struggle reaches its pinnacle on the album’s closing track, “Waking Light,” while Beck, as always, nearly allows for a glimmer of hope to shine without ever really allowing it through.

Beck’s work has been missed, as this was his first recorded full-length album since 2008’s Modern Guilt—not counting his songbook-style release, Song Reader. While Morning Phase struggled to reach the same peaks put in place by his masterpiece, Sea Change, the album proves its worth. A jack-of-alltrades, Beck plays the role of wise folk singer well. While it is still early, Morning Phase is no doubt one of the albums to beat so far this year.

Instead of making like her vocals and soaring, however, Katy B’s Little Red glides comfortably along, plateauing at bass-centered banality. That is not to say that the album is not fun; it’s certainly got some heavyweight thumpers that belong on the dance floor. Some examples include “Aaliyah,” a golden entrancing collaboration with Jessie Ware, or the glimmering single “5 AM.” It’s the prioritization of production over Katy’s exquisite voice that leads to the big disappointment. Sure, most of these songs are pretty great, and the intrusive production does serve a purpose (evident in it’s effectiveness on “Crying for No Reason,” “Sapphire Blue,” and “All My Lovin’”), but it often just acts as a barrier from the emotion Katy tries to tap into on this album.

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On “5 AM,” Katy proclaims, “I need somebody to calm me down / a little lovin’ like Valium.” Perhaps all Katy B needs is a cup of coffee and a good brainstorming session to beget ideas for her next foray, where hopefully her voice will take the stage and send overproduction to the back seat.

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