Soundbite: Ariel Pink’s Haunted Grafitti
By Alex LaRue
April 28, 2008 9:02 p.m.
Bedroom producer and as-lo-fi-as-possible musician Ariel Pink occupies a place completely of his own, and that makes sense, considering the relative isolation that has created his musical career. From his Echo Park apartment, Pink creates his meticulously arranged, explicitly dated pop songs, layering instrument upon instrument and running the whole thing through a tape deck to lend it a deliberately tinny edge.
The final product ends up sounding something like a maxed-out $10 radio reciting disco, funk, and rock from the ’70s or ’80s, apart from the very radio-unfriendly deconstruction that comes midway through each song. And in his decidedly low-budget style, Pink makes the drum tracks with his mouth, leaving a skittering midrange layer that floats somewhere between the guitars and vocals rather than locking the track down.
It seems as if Ariel Pink is determined to have it both ways. He captures the catchiness and accessibility of old radio hits, while relying on carefully crafted song structures and his idiosyncratic production to contribute something more highbrow ““ although I’m almost certain he would object to the use of that term.
“Howling at the Moon” rides layers of buoyant synths into a hazily dreamed disco, with a chorus of “Love is on the way home,” that a Michael Jackson less interested in avoiding the public eye would likely mount a lawsuit against.
“Jesus Christ Came to Me in a Dream” looks at first to be a slow-burning, love-making funk or “˜90s soul jam, until Pink adopts a Lou Reed tenor to sing something typically undecipherable about ice melting away. The song especially embodies the Ariel Pink aesthetic as it disintegrates into something that could just as easily have been a freely improvised piece of noise rock. It’s a rich contrast, but not an entirely esoteric one ““ Pink obliges the listener with a charmingly indulgent outro section that maintains the abandon of the deconstruction but still follows the chords.
Although he epitomizes the best, and at times the irrelevance, of DIY products with his music ““ some tracks are utterly unique, while some others, like “Passing the Petal 2 You,” only make sense in Pink’s bedroom ““ Pink makes no pretensions about his importance or his art. Before impressing Animal Collective, the extent of his distribution amounted to handmade copies. Lashing out against any aesthetic missteps would be to miss the greater point, which is about musical empowerment and individuality.
Fortunately, Pink rarely puts the listener in that position. And somewhat surprisingly, he has buried gems throughout the pop parlance of his CD. They’re just very, very dusty.
““ Alex LaRue
E-mail LaRue at [email protected].
