Beneath the veneer of sleek accomplishment, there's an undertow of risk.
There's an undertow of antipathy in her performance that drags even Dylan's whimsical "New Pony" into a darker, nastier place.
But there's an undertow of pathos that often comes starkly to the surface, as here: Dad beat me, my sister, and my mom, and he finally got arrested.
From the start there's an undertow of cruelty to the teenagers' high jinks as they learn what they can do, as when they levitate a stuffed animal to frighten a child.
Always, there's an undertow of comedy in her work, as in a wall piece, "Teaching Bo to Count Backwards" (1996-97), that is composed of a shelf made of an inverted roof gutter, bearing thirty brands of canned black olives.
I mean, every deck must have two jokers... .. Professor Moore (she teaches creative writing) can laugh about "my first joker year" but – as in her short stories – there's an undertow of melancholy.
Full of gamine fervour, she jumps on chairs and gesticulates like a soap-box orator when spouting the boyfriend's pearls of wisdom but there's an undertow of vulnerability in the vehemence because she knows that she does not fully understand what she's ventriloquising.
"Coca-Cola or Dow or whoever would come to the president," explains a former White House colleague of Band's, "and say, 'We need your help on this.'".... There's an undertow of transactionalism in the glittering annual dinners...the fixation on celebrity, and a certain contingent of donors whose charitable contributions and business interests occupy an uncomfortable proximity.
