Ariel Pink

I'm not sure there is a separate version of Baby? At least on the vinyl release, it's not actually on the LP, just a bonus track on the mp3 download.

huh. maybe I'm wrong. I have the Baby 12" and listened to the album on spotify yesterday, Baby is the last track and sounded a little different to me. not that it matters really.

with the last album the version of Can't Hear My Eyes that Mexican Summer put out was different than the one on Before Today (slightly lower-fi, and better imo)

ultimately I guess I like this record ok. some of the weirdo stuff (like Kinski Assassin and Is This The Spot? and Schnitzel Boogie) is getting stuck in my head pretty regularly. Symphony of the Nymph fucking sucks. Baby is good. The rest is kinda boring.

"getting stuck in my head pretty regularly"

is this a good criteria to for a good song?

i used to think so, but now im not sure.
if you listen to crappy music for a long enough time, it will get stuck in your head, too.

i'm glad baby isn't on the LP, song doesn't fit with the bizarro zappa pop of the rest of it. i honestly think this is the best new thing i've heard all year. top to bottom it's a killer record - excepting DRIFTWOOD and NOSTRADAMUS AND ME

Driftwood is my favorite song from the album lol

if you listen to crappy music for a long enough time, it will get stuck in your head, too.

well yeah, there are things that get stuck in my head that piss me off, "kinski assassins with agents in athens" goes around in my head and I enjoy it, I guess is what I'm sayin'

this whole record has songs I like or w/e but I think Live it Up is the best song on it idk

pink slime is about his cum

This album is darn good.

this album sucks, why did i listen to (some of) you guys

double agents from athens

i'm glad baby isn't on the LP, song doesn't fit with the bizarro zappa pop of the rest of it.

is it not on the vinyl version? its at the end of the CD version and, yeah, it feels odd placed there.

I'm not sure there is a separate version of Baby? At least on the vinyl release, it's not actually on the LP, just a bonus track on the mp3 download.

― muus lääv? :D muus dut :( (Telephone thing), Tuesday, September 18, 2012 11:51 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

o, missed that 1

yeah thank god it's not on the LP. this is seriously becoming my favorite record of the last 3/4 years

Live It Up!

"Driftwood" channels that well-documented affection for Faith-era Cure really well IMO; I'm glad "Nostradamus" is drifting enough to serve as a buffer between "Baby" and the rest of the album.

Boom! Excellent article and a worthwhile discussion in the comments too.

http://thequietus.com/articles/10133-ariel-pink-beta-male-misogyny

I dunno, I'm not sure I care that much about his incoherent comments to get so indignant about it.

Those comments, however incoherent, are symptomatic of wider issues of misogyny in indie culture. The article does a good job of opening the discussion out.

Is the target of this piece indie culture, Ariel Pink or some expression of misogyny? I'm not sure I really get this. It's something about going to clubs in Norwich that play BIS and getting hit on by drunk dudes?

You know, it's just that I would have never really had expectations of Ariel Pink to be some kind of bastion of 'sexual democracy'. I've never really expected that from his music. Even line years ago about wanting a chick who puts up with his shit and puts out. I mean, it's always been there, right? Plus, he's always been really WEIRD, even I guess, a bit creepy.

It is true that he has always been an asshole. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be called out for it.

It seems like there's several complaints being conflated together here, that's all. And it makes the entire issue less clear, imo.

The main thrust of the article seems fairly clear to me - Ariel Pink's comments re: Beta males are indicative of a wider misogyny running through 'indie', and it would be at least helpful to use them as a starting point to check yrself and yr privilege/presentation of victimhood.

I do have issues with the lack of distinction between the twee scene and the larger indie scene, but that's for very specific reasons and nothing that's written is particularly inaccurate, so.

'tweecore strongholds' is a disarming phrase

I'm from Norwich and was completely unaware of any tweecore stronghold existing there.

Interview him sometime. Dude's a creep. But I still like his music.

a silent, cloaking stronghold, just as it was predicted in the protocols of the elders of nyan

Lol, Dwight, there totally is. Mostly headed by my awesome bros in B34rsu1t.

tweecore stronghold ruled with an amateurishly knitted fist.

that article is getting at something but it kinds of seems to come to a sudden stop before it completely unfolds its point, a bit.

That article is putting words in Ariel's mouth, imo. The "beta males" line didn't read to me as "let's get revenge on the alphas by slyly seducing girls with our intellect" thing but a "fuck alpha males, let me deploy the word 'prey' to compare them to predators"

In the original Wire article Pink talks quite explicitly about getting revenge on alpha males through using his intellect to seduce women. Women aren't allowed any agency, they're just vehicles for male competition to get 'pussy in the pocket'. How delightful. Classifications such as beta and alpha are such reductive bullshit anyway. Pink's thinking on gender and queerness is totally idiotic. So I don't think Joe Kennedy was putting words into his mouth at all.

OH REALLY? yuck.

ugh I feel like I'm getting stupider just thinking about this

but is ariel pink's damage really indicative of broader trends in indie music?

yes, as explained in the article

maybe in a different article!

Don't forget about Peep Show! Also, apparently, evidence of problems with the indie cultures.

The sense that the sexual democracy of that scene is a sham, amounting ultimately to the perpetuation of the same old male privileges in a more passive-aggressive way, is one of the (many) things to have consistently undermined twee's claims to political credibility.

secret sympathies here w/ paglia i think

But who has ever claimed that 'indie culture' is sexually democratic? If we're playing this game, then surely such scenes are inherently constituted from those standards.

maybe my problem is that i can't unpack the uk'isms. "Remember all those guys who really loved Le Tigre or Electrelane or Bis or CSS, but ultimately might as well have been in the triples-for-singles meat market up the road when it came to putting their money where their emancipatory mouths were?" what is triples-for-singles and how does that indicate that sexual democracy in twee scene is a sham?

i had no idea twee aspired to political credibility! i thought it was just a mostly spent aesthetic movement. and i never thought of ariel pink as twee? more as psychotic?

I didn't get that bit either, don't know what it means. I sort of am unclear how people hooking up at indie clubs distinguishes those clubs from... any clubs. But you know Ariel Pink is shit so feel free to smear them with whatever. Apparently the guy is also a massive racist too, I can tell by how annoying I find his music.

the bit about triples-for-singles i mean.

also no doubt plenty of people are crepey, but actual meat market shit clubs really are a level above and we shouldn't forget this.

this part is pretty terrible too:

"There's no direct continuity, but twee and its attendant bookish 'niceness' is one of the guiding influences on the Amerophile Dalston aesthetic Luke Turner described in his recent piece on Swans for Riot of Perfume."

there's no direct continuity but it's one of the guiding influences?

also who the fuck are Tullycraft and what do they have to do with Ariel Pink?

I assume it means triple measures of spirits for the price of a single measure xp

Ariel Pink isn't twee. They use the concept of the 'beta male' to move from Peep Show to AP to twee. Which is problematic, I think, but still coherent.

Triples-for-singles is, I assume, triple shots of alcohol for people without partners. But I'm extrapolating from context here, I've never actually seen such a thing advertised.

xpost ah, Mencap has it, I suspect.