Ariel Pink

Life in LA.

The intro to "Credit" kills me every time.

Hahaha, yes! Those three Paw Tracks CDs are all so great in their own way, Doldrums would definitely be my #1 pick. Haven't given the new one a 2nd listen yet.

I listened to the Entire Ariel Pink Discography As Research in 2008, concluded that "Worn Copy" was my favourite and had my favourite songs on it in the context of Ariel's Thing, but in retrospect I'm unclear as to whether or not I actually like Ariel's music or have any place for it in my life except to put on to make fun of houseguests who are talking about the drugs they enjoy doing

that makes me sound like a narc maybe but something about cute homos chatting bout where they're gonna score drugs later just makes me reach for my Ariel records

Errr... not sure I can relate to any of that!

Doldrums for me is one of those records that reminds me of a particular time in my life, so sentimental value. I liked the other Paw Tracks ones, but only select tracks here and there. Before Today is consistently a solid record tho.

Have the new one, but this thread has actually put me off listening to it :/

'Credit' is the one.

― Jamie_ATP, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 8:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This.

Errr... not sure I can relate to any of that!

Me neither, was the point

Haha

Doldrums is my fave too, with Before Today and Mature Themes tied for second place. Everything else has its moments and spots of amazing/incredulous mess.

Worn Copy gets to oppressive, House Arrest is good pop fun but spotty sometimes

scared famous 4 me

IM NOT REAL AND I WON'T CALL YOU

call me stupid (and sorry for coming late to the discussion) but why is talking about going on the prowl misogynist?

eg. man says 'i wanna chase some tail'. does that demean women or does that just make the man a bit shallow (in this instance....maybe a month ago he was in a serious and challenging relationship with an equal)?

was it the use of the words 'rape' and 'prey'? it might have been a brutal analogy but i get the idea ariel likes being grotesque. i don't think referring to women as 'prey' necessarily denies their agency. the women 'hunted down' could just as easily talk abt going out on the prowl and hunting down men on that same night.

tho wasnt ariel's whole pt that he DOESNT chase down/'rape', he charms. in which case, isnt HE decrying the 'chase'/'rape' scenario??

>>>"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"

― whiter than... this? (Ówen P.)

^maybe it's a bit of both? 'i am an intellectual charmer, he is a predatory rapist'!

likewise, why is the discussion of hetero male sexual power struggles misogynist? it might not be about women's agency but does that matter? don't women compete for men too? it's just another pt of view

genuinely confused.

is he really as influential as everyone says he is? i think we live in a post animal collective indie world, not ap. way more people heard feels, strawb jam, mpp than anything ap did.

keep in mind i love mature themes more than certain friends

Not a week goes by that i don't read a variation on the phrase 'faded VHS memories' or see a music video that makes liberal use of FCP's "Bad TV" filter. I'm blaming that all on him just for the hell of it.

there are so many bands/solo artists, whatever over the past few years that sound like second rate Ariel knockoffs to me. ariel himself is part of the "post AC" world though too isn't he? he's like the alice cooper to AC's Zappa.

I sort of feel like AC took what they did as far as it can go and can't really see them inspiring any worthy imitators. The fact that Ariel's early stuff was deceivingly rough or under-realized I think probably led more people to want to do what he did but different or better.

also solo artists are where it's at now.

chillwave/hauntology didnt become a thing til 2010 right? when before today came out, but before its release?

ac will/have already become the grateful dead of our generation

AP's been a going concern since before today. that was his first album to be annointed by Pitchfork, but his earlier albums were pretty big in the indie set iirc

yeah, 2004 paw tracks release of doldrums is what put him on the map and then the whole group of imitators started popping up around 2010, just in time for him to release BT and get even bigger.

but why him, and why the delayed response?

I thought the whole Chillwave boom was in 2009 right after Merriweather Post Pavillion came out.

why him what? why are musicians inspired by a guy who is an incredible songwriter? delayed response - maybe because it's harder to copy what he did than it seems?

so if ac is the beatles, ap is the velvet underground?

yeah, I guess '09 was the year of washed out, neon indian, carles chillwave article, etc. I don't think it's likely that those things were influenced by MPP that came out just a few months earlier.

AP is the bob dylan of his generation. other chillwave bands are the byrds, sonny & cher, etc. that emerged 3 or 4 years after dylan's debut.

ariel pink is the tiny tim of his generation

i remember in that article he (and lots of others like james murphy) was seeing his influence on a lot of artists
http://www.spin.com/articles/ariel-pink-in-praise-of-guilty-genius/
"Every time I hear her," he says of Grimes, "I hear a little of myself. It's obvious, but it's cool: You can see the potential for something."
i think "obvious" is pushing it a bit on that one...

i think he's calling grimes' music "obvious" in the same sense that his own is - not that she's taking obvious inspiration from him

Pink isn't even a fraction of the singer or performer that Tiny Tim was. he obviously wins on the songwriting front though.

The tiny tim of today is like pomplamoose or something. pains me to say that because I love tiny tim, but in terms of gimmicky performer that got famous doing covers it fits.

yeah, 2004 paw tracks release of doldrums is what put him on the map and then the whole group of imitators started popping up around 2010, just in time for him to release BT and get even bigger.

― wk, Thursday, April 25, 2013 12:45 PM (52 minutes ago)

the first round of obvious ariel pink imitators i remember showed up in 2008 or so, e.g. gary war's new ratheonport. at the same time, american indie garage bands were going nuts for super-shitty fidelity (in the wake of AP and times new viking, coming from very different directions) and massive amounts of reverb (a la oh sees & ty segall). 2009 saw a shift towards hazy/fuzzy nostalgia vibe surfing from folks like real estate and kurt vile.

blank dogs also figure in there somewhere, drew a lot of attention in 2007 w ap-style take on uk post punk

yeah, definitely gary war. garage has always been shitty sounding though. since the original back from the grave bands, through to the mummies, etc. shitty sounding pop music with synths was something kind of new and different though.

I don't know, to me it's all about the songwriting. I think people underestimate that. it's not like pink invented vhs nostalgia or anything.

no doubt, but there was a brief mid-to late 00s fascination with super shitty, teengenerate/early hellacopters-style recordings of indieish music: tnv, blank dogs, eat skull, psychedelic horseshit, the wavves, etc. we can't so soon have forgot those heady shitgaze nights?

i don't see all that as ap-influenced by any means (i'd say blank dogs and gary war were), but with those ap reissues, the lo-fi boom helped clear room for more commercially viable versions of vaguely similar stuff a couple/few years later

"See, I can hear my influence in this music," Pink shouts from the passenger seat, ignoring Emily as Coldplay's "Paradise" comes on the radio. "That over-melodiousness, that whole keyboard bit. That was all me. Seriously. They don't even realize."
^^^ there are bits like that a few places in the interview, made me think the guy is a little paranoid.

boards of canada seems relevant too. I think they were one of the first to popularize the idea of not just generic distorted lo-fi sound, but specifically evoking the sound of a bad classroom filmstrip or stretched out warbling tape. I don't know any of those bands you mentioned except for wavves who to me seem more generally punk rock. to me there's a distinct difference between a making a lo-fi recording because it's the punk rock thing to do and making a lo-fi recording of a type of music that's not typically meant to sound lo-fi.

made me think the guy is a little paranoid.

getting high in the morning will do that to you

after reading that article i thought starting a thread called "artists that ariel pink could think were influenced by him weren't" , or something like that.

Broadcast comes to mind.

"but weren't" damn where is the edit button.

xp yeah, i agree that the boc-like "bad filmstrip" aesthetic isn't present in, say, times new viking and their offsprings. they reach back more to gbv & sebadoh-style 90s lo-fi and decades of shitty garage/punk sonics. but it is there, at least in received and reinterpreted form, in blank dogs and gary war. also present in a less direct way in folks like matt mondanile (real estate/ducktails) jocking old vhs as the referent for an interst in fuzz, hiss, reverb and "hazy" nostalgia.

not sure why i'm arguing for this, tbh, just the way i remember it

gary war, blank dogs, & ducktails are all Post-Pink though. Hey, Post Pink would have been a better genre name than chillwave.

gary war, blank dogs, & ducktails are all Post-Pink

oh yeah shit yeah. was just trying to locate postpink ground zero in 2008/2009. fuzz-splitting.

i remember thinking Before Today got a rave rating on Pitchfork because he had attained this status as an indie demi-god around that time, and Pitchfork wanted to keep up with the times. background being they had shat all over his entire discography years before.

lol, I just revisited some of the earlier parts of this thread and saw that dumb pitchfork doldrums review and googled nick sylvester since he sounded familiar and I thought he used to post here. I guess that idiot got his comeuppance.

are you gonna look after my boys???????