Review Summary: More than just interesting results
For a period of time in the late '90s and early '00s, Ariel Pink made a lot of music. Described as one long session of creativity, those years yielded an onslaught of lo-fi Pink releases recorded with an 8-track and a few instruments. Indeed, not only is the recording quality amateurish, but the techniques are too-it may not be obvious at first, but almost all of the percussion from this period consists of beatboxing and tapping on objects. His makeshift version of auxiliary instrumentation consists of scatting and humming. Herein is the magic in this fruitful period of Ariel Pink's discography: In spite of the terrible quality of the recordings (note: the Paw Tracks remasters do go a long way in cleaning this up), Ariel has incredible musical talent. Basslines crawl and slink, melodies serpentine and dazzle, and Ariel alternatingly squawks and croons. All of this adds up to a school final project that caught the attention of Animal Collective and their aforementioned imprint Paw Tracks, which remastered
The Doldrums and a number of other early Ariel Pink releases in the mid-2000s.
It's not hard to see what caught their attention.
The Dolrums is as pop as it is left-field. Characterizing his music as a psychedelic meld of the popular music of yesteryear, both unfashionable and fashionable, is trite at this point, but at the same time, you'd be pretty hard-pressed as a listener
not to latch onto a keyboard lick or a vocal melody and name its father or grandfather. Wisps of Todd Rundgren, The Beatles, The Cure, and R. Stevie Moore—Ariel's most obvious forebearer, and later, his collaborator—float about his work. Still, it'd be doing Ariel Pink a disservice to view his music solely in the lens of his influences;
The Doldrums is unique in its hazy playfulness, its offbeat rhythms, and its gorgeous melodies. Ariel's background as a bassist is crystal-clear, as nearly every track has a fluid and wandering bassline that demands the attention of the listener as much as Ariel's unpolished vocals. And yes, they are unpolished, but Ariel's vocal shamelessness and his willingness to break into a feeble falsetto are indicators of his approach to music: bold and unafraid.
This approach pays off handsomely. The repetitive and epic 11-minute closer,
The Ballad of Bobby Pyn, probably wouldn't play as well if even a hint of hesitation could be detected in Ariel's approach. You can almost picture what Ariel would have intended to song to sound like, had he a recording studio and adequate equipment (The fact that he has re-recorded songs like "I Wanna Be Young" and "L'estat" for his major-label hi-fi releases helps prod listeners along here). This isn't a knock on the song, nor does it reveal any wishes of mine for the song to be re-recorded—it simply shows an artist bursting with creativity, completely disregarding his lo-fi shackles and making the music he wants to make. It is quite impressive just how mature his songwriting is for a university student. In another dimension, songs like "Among Dreams" and "Wait for Kate" could be indie smashes for established bands. The former's bassline might be the most ear-catching of any on the album, taking center stage right from its inception. The latter's impassioned baritone vocal performance (Robert Smith comes to mind) imbues its yearning melody with the most serious air of any songs on the album, save perhaps "The Doldrums." Some might wish Ariel stuck to the more somber, lyrically grounded style of those two songs, but the youthful lightness of Ariel's lo-fi period shows the pure joy of creation for Ariel. As he so eloquently puts it on
House Arrest's "Interesting Results," whenever he picks up a pen, he at least gets interesting results. He gets quite a bit more than that here in what is perhaps the apex of a creative frenzy that yielded hundreds of lo-fi weirdo pop tunes.
