I have seen Ariel Pink a few times before and I never know what to do with his weirdness, do I like him or hate him? How seriously should I consider him as an artist? Is he a joke or a genius? Pink seems to always walk on that thin line between grotesque and amazing and I often wonder on which side he is going to fall at the end.
He was playing another of these Twilight Concert Series at Santa Monica on Thursday, and the pier was packed with a very young crowd, extremely excited to see Mr. Pink. For once, his outfit was almost normal despite the fact that he was wearing a black women corsage, but since I have seen him playing in some extravangant turquoise dress and spiky high platform purple shoes, he had quite a conservative appearance on Thursday night. However his drummer was still wearing that beach woman bikini, despite the fresh breeze blowing from the Pacific Ocean.
The first time I saw him, his show sounded like a karaoke session as he was performing to pre-recorded backing tracks with one or two musicians. But no such thing happened last night, as his five-piece band was providing a very powerful musical background to his erratic performance. Ariel is a goofy individual who makes magic, his songs are musical collages with abrupt accelerations or changes of rhythms, washed out pop harmonies with a myriad of voices going in all directions, weird noises, freak-out moments and monster-like vocals. The whole show sounded like a circus seen through a kaleidoscope of a demented scientist, an impossible mess regurgitating gems in repeat while Ariel looked like a mad man changing face a few times during the same song, screaming, meowing, simply being the eccentric guy who composed an album as crazy as ‘Pom Pom’ is, an album I haven’t digested yet. It’s a full meal with many unexpected spices in it, dense as a thick soup that contains every single ingredient of the past you can imagine.
In the middle of his goofiness, constantly acclaimed by the crowd, everyone seemed to have forgotten what a controversial figure Pink is,… after all this is someone who has said: ‘ I’m all for being a deviant, all for being a deviant, and being proud. Don’t pretend like you’re Betty Crocker. I love gays, by the way’…. or ‘I love paedophiles too, and I love necrophiliacs [sic], and all these other people. When do they get their marriage and orientation, when do they get to talk about their sexual repression and how society doesn’t accept them?’ Then, there was the Madonna controversy, Pink has reportedly pretended he was asked to work for the iconic pop star with some provocative declaration about her being in ‘needs of some good songwriting’, which cost him to be called a mermaid… He is one hated man and one beloved star at the same time, but I could only hear the love on the pier. In any case, I love when people trigger such love-or-hate reactions at any level, music and talk, and beside his mad faces he didn’t do or say anything controversial last night, there was just an awkward meeting with a kid and his mother and Ariel Pink around children is always a bit freaky for some reasons…. Remember, he has even collaborated with people like ‘Lord of garbage’ Kim Fowley on his last album.
Most of the show was about the ‘Pom Pom’ songs, and a few older ones, building a very colorful décor, splashing its colors all over the place, with bits of disco groves, Motown chunks and even pieces of hard rock. You may find Ariel Pink funny or not, you may find him sleazy or not, I finally think that tunes like White Freckles’, ‘Put Your Number in My Phone’, ‘Goth Bomb’, ‘Dinosaur Carebears’ are hilarious especially when they are injected with all these ‘oi, oi, oi’… and other onomatopoeia. I can’t remember when the crowd became very rowdy, may be just after ‘Not Enough Violence’, but kids began to jump and I almost think we would have to leave our spots, but we hold on the barricade while Ariel Pink was going on with more oddities, and finally sang his catchy earworm, ‘Picture Me Gone’ that was begging for its children choir.
I am still hesitating to think anything about an Ariel Pink’s show, sometimes, it looks and sounds totally absurd, sometimes it is obsessively happy and ironic, sometimes it is thrilling,… there is no way to decide unless, you choose to enjoy the show from start to finish, as I did, Pink is constantly walking on this thin razor edge separating strangeness and irony from beauty and poetry, but he does it with such conviction you have no choice to embrace his weirdness.
Setlist
Four Shadows
White Freckles
Jell-o
Lipstick
One Summer Night
Put Your Number in My Phone
Goth Bomb
Dinosaur Carebears
Not Enough Violence
Fright Night (Nevermore)
(Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitisong)
Dayzed Inn Daydreams
Bright Lit Blue Skies
(The “Rockin” Ramrodscover)
Picture Me Gone
Netherlands
More pictures of the show here (The Mynabirds were opening)
