Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti- Before Today: A Review

Listening to Ariel Pink is like being placed inside a jukebox time machine filled with simulated pop songs from the past. His music exists somewhere between the waking and dreaming state – the equivalent of a drifting delirium while perched at a razor’s edge of lucidity. They are the half remembered songs from your adolescence, it could be Hall and Oates “I Can’t Go For That” or Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon”, or any song that might have seemed hapless and sentimental in all the wrong ways at the time; but which now you look back upon with a fond sympathy. There is a translucent nostalgia that seeps in through his music, a product of the emotions that could only have been borne out of the meridian of your life.

It could be something as simple as why 10 CC’s “I’m Not in Love” always makes you remember the first person you kissed or the night your dog got ran over, and you went home sobbing in the rain.

Its interesting how Ariel’s music re-purposes the past; the AOR pop that you remember from the checkout line in grocery stores and thrift shops, those melodies that rested in your sub-conscious during your formative years and for a long time seemed destined for AM radio obscurity. There is a prismatic effect his music has on the memories of songs and things; slivers of light and fuzzy shadows that cast themselves upon the people and emotions that you once knew. Each song is like a Polaroid of the past; blurry, opaque and elusive, yet infinitely suggestive. In fact, I find it odd that some critics dismiss his music’s power to evoke the elapsed, and by extension the depth and scale of time itself. And it’s not that the critics doubt his ability to bring the past into the present, it’s his methodology–and sincerity–which are called into question. Its too divergent, too precocious, too naive, too disembodied from the source. This is where the crux of his criticisms lie, and its exactly why they are misplaced. If one’s art is to invoke the past; wouldn’t the method require that one seek the lens necessary for its execution?

Ariel Rosenberg was born in Los Angeles; a city that exists as an idea for many, a tangled labyrinth of cultural tropes that persists in the popular consciousness as a lucid dream but is perhaps more accurately a distorted reality in search of a dream. The seedy glamor of living amongst broken actors and coked-out film executives, the neon flickers of sex shops littered along the Sunset Strip, failed erotic encounters with lovers on the East Side, the otherwordly anti-septic quality of life on the West Side, the tramps, whores, pimps and hustlers that run the city-night streets, and the nagging feeling that you are living in a permanent carnival of a town, a sun-tanning salon that lies inside a colossal desert, something that only David Lynch or Terry Gilliam could have dreamed of.

The fever dream of Los Angeles sets the stage for Ariel Pink’s newest release “Before Today”, an album that has been two years in the making and was recorded at Tito Jackson’s studio with Quincy Jones grandson Sunny Levine as producer. It is a record that enhances Ariel’s sonic palette with the kind of meticulous high-art production that one is used to hearing on Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, or Michael Jackson records. Many longtime Ariel acolytes have voiced concern with their “lo-fi genius” succumbing to a proper studio record and tarnishing the reputation that Ariel has built for himself as a 4 track idiot pop savant. The concerns are unfounded; this is by far one of the best rock records of 2010, and catapults Ariel to his highest creative peak as an artist.

“Before Today” is a lateral move for Ariel Pink, primarily because the melodies and hooks that he is known for are still in place, the odd time signatures remain present, his method is still intact, but the difference resides in the fidelity of the production which now allows his ideas to soar instead of wading in the cassette crud aesthetic of his earlier releases. Also, the themes that persist in his records – the vagaries of eros, the secret pains of the deceived, the quiet flame of suffering that is unrequited ardor, all these abide and in fact are more poignant this time around; the afflictions are sharper, the lacerations draw more blood.

“Round and Round”, the single for the record sets the framework for the entire album. It is an utterly magnetic piece of arrangement and songwriting that is structured in chapters and borrows the production aesthetic of Hall and Oates with a re-worked faux bassline from “Billie Jean“. It all comes together by interpolating the lyricism and sentiments that Ariel travels in best: the enigmas of the heart. It starts off simply enough with a big pop chorus that references any chart topping tune from the 60′s that uses the ubiquitous “na, na, na,” ala Beach Boys or Tommy James.  A slinky bassline transfixes itself into the composition as Ariel’s voice glides over the kind of shimmering production that would make Abba woozy. The whole song works on two levels, it is first a reflection on the nature of those type of relationships that disclose themselves in cycles, the circle being alluded to in the title “Round and Round”, to the lyrics “merry go round we go up and around” to the cyclical in meta-form “I’m afraid, you’re afraid” and “we die, and we live and we’re born again.”

The second level is that of parody; specifically love songs from the 80′s with their trite throw-away sentiments, and bombastic declarations of heartbreak and melancholy. “Heartbreaking, sentimental, everything is my fault”. There is a note of bittersweet resignation in Ariel’s voice in these words, a final gasp at the possibility of redemption. The last verse of the piece reveals a man drowning in his own broken hope, “Hold on, I’m calling, calling you back to the ball, and we’ll dazzle them all, hold on.” “Round and Round” sounds like an anti-prom song, the work of someone who either never went to prom or couldn’t get a date, or was too pridefully precocious to go so instead decided to write a mock-prom song that somehow combines the sentiment of being there, but only in jest, as a scorned outsider looking in.

“Before Today” is a virtual arrangement of sonic influences that shifts the poles from his earlier work, due in large part to the artistic freedom afforded by the new production approach. Whereas with House Arrest, The Doldrums, and Worn Copy the network of influences recycled themselves in specifics (The Cure, 70′s soft-rock, 60′s baroque pop); with Before Today, the connections are broader and the circuitry behind them more engineered. It’s impossible to work on a review of this record without alluding to other artists, Ariel’s whole career is built upon this premise; he has been quoted as saying “when I was a kid MTV and VH1 were my babysitters”.

L’Estat channels the synthesizers of ELO and the rhythms of Vegas 70′s lounge pop into something that is both frazzled and majestically elegiac; ending with a synth/bass/drum breakdown that approaches the best work of Vangelis. “Fright Night” (nevermore) is one of the standout tracks, with an allusion to Thriller and a hook that recalls the B52′s in execution but not necessarily in mood. The tone here is tenebrous, with the refrain “knock, knock on the door”, adding a sinister quality to an already vaguely foreboding song. The basslines on this record are something to take note of as they really do drive the engine of the record. They can be simultaneously smooth, spasmodic and dense; as if the bass players for Liquid Liquid and Michael Jackson had congealed into one.

“Beverly Kills” sounds like a freestyle/boogie track replete with a Bootsy Collins bassline and vintage keyboard sounds that could have been taken off a Stevie B or Lisa Lisa and The Cult Jam record. It’s probably the most boisterous and festive white-boy boogie funk you will hear this year. One never imagined that Ariel would go into full freestyle mode, although he has forayed into 4-track disco before, it has always been awash in too much reverb and distortion to really get anyone dancing. At this juncture it becomes increasingly clear how much of an LA record this really is (or wants to be).  “Can’t Hear My Eyes“  is a Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk era re-hash with the kinds of lyrics that only Lyndsey Buckingham could have written,  “I want a lady as beautiful as a Sunset Strip”.  It’s warm and comforting and devoid of any conscious pastiche on his part, although just eccentric enough that we know its still Ariel Pink at the helm.

The last two tracks deserve special mention although they are at variance with each other tonally and stylistically. “Menopause Man” is a return to his earlier style of recording, its properly bizarre, with a bass texture that plays like a high-wire act between Goblin circa Suspiria and Steely Dan during the Aja sessions, in other words its spooky, dessicated, and skeletally funky. His vocals delivered in a monotone-chant, “change me, im chan-ging, day-to day, im a lady from t-oday”, which then breaks into an ascending chord progression that modulates between musique concrete and solo Robert Wyatt. It’s outsider pop of the highest order, something that recalls the work that Brian Eno did with Robert Fripp, or early Roxy Music on a weekend drug comedown.

The album ends with “Revolution’s a Lie”, a track that reveals just how swiftly Ariel can set off in a new direction while setting the bar higher than other artists working in the same genre. A compressed bass groove taken from the Wire and Joy Division library begins the proceedings – it snakes in and out of the remainder of the song as the drum rhythms pound like a metronome- and you are transported to the Autobahn in 1974 .  A zig zagging Moog advances and then recedes in the distance in tandem with the propulsive drums. It’s a relentless slice of kraut new-wave with Ariel’s voice set to maximum on the echo-plex; his low-hushed calls appear and disappear as machine gun samples populate the background;  the album finally skids to a halt as the incantatory “Revolution’s a Lie” refrain collapses in on itself. It’s a mesmerizing ending to a record that will be sure to divide listeners and yet gain many new disciples in the process.

Revolution’s a Lie

Before Today is released June 7th 2010 in the UK, June 8th in the US on 4AD.