the video above for Ariel Pink’s new single ‘Put Your Number In My ‘Phone’ is entertaining and quirky and I think it’s going to take a few goes to get my head round, to be honest!
I’ll just let the video and music speak for itself, but you may be interested to know that Ariel Pink’s new album, pom pom, will be released on 4AD on November 17.
The tracklisting is as follows:
P1. Plastic Raincoats In The Pig Parade
P2. White Freckles
P3. Four Shadows
P4. Lipstick
P5. Not Enough Violence
I1. Put Your Number In My Phone
I2. One Summer Night
I3. Nude Beach A Go-Go
I4. Goth Bomb
I5. Dinosaur Carebears
N1. Negativ Ed
N2. Sexual Athletics
N3. Jell-O
N4. Black Ballerina
K1. Picture Me Gone
K2. Exile On Frog Street
K3. Dayzed Inn Daydreams
I came through the door this evening to find no bills (hooray!), no CDs to review (massive backlog, so just as well) and the latest issue of The Wire. This month’s cover star is Ariel Pink (I’m going to revel in reading the mag in bed later, along with The Wire’s excellent collection of essays on Scott Walker that they’ve just published as No Regrets).
I then switched on the computer to find that amongst the many submissions is a new track from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti.It’s taken from the new album Mature Themes, and it’s called ‘Only In Dreams.’ Very different to what Ariel Pink has done before, it’s really rather lovely. Stream or download below:
The tracklisting can be found here, and he plays Glasgow’s Stereo on November 8.
Yesterday saw the release of a special one off digital release from Ariel Pink (Areil Rosenberg to his parents), to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Entitled ‘Witchhunt Suite for WWIII’ the sixteen minute track comes with accompanying video that demonstrates his flair for pop and experimentation, this time in a video he has directed with Ariel Charm.
According to the press release, he originally began working on this as this events of 9/11 began to unfold, and a two part version was released as a tour only CD-R in 2007, as Yas Dudette. This version was recorded especially as a tribute.
And should you wish…those lyrics in full:
Sky sky cam what’s seen before you
Contrived tracking systems live
Last name laden is soaked in sodom
We tried our best now test these organs
Lonesome kittens walk in circles
Milky substance rains from eyes
Hocus pocus not precocious
We’re lightly tapping heavens forehead
Bomb the building bang bin laden
Building the bombs bam bomb building
Oh little reindeer soaked in semen
Caca’s burning under thunder
Slightly sopping sucking whirlwind
Yer family’s tightly flapping curtain
Sky sky cam what’s seen before u contrived tracking system lies
Last name laden is soaked in sodom
We tried our best now testis organ..building big bomb building the bombs building bombs
Verse 2
The human race is an invention of the west foreign every other land
The swine walk around as man and the sheep can’t know that they sleep…
My evil the man before u is not a man but a dog I’ve extinguished the flames with hot piss so I ask
Is that all there is to a fire
Freedom!
Gonna get em, we got em, we gotta
X 10
No time for your burning bras or talk of mass deception
Pull your guns let terrorism stir up your aggression
Gonna get em we got em, we gonna..x 4, x10
Stand up for your right to talk about US domination
Crawl into the trenches and join the real worlds form of conversation
Gonna get em we got em we gotta x8
No time for your burning bras or talk of mass deception
Pull your guns let terrorism stir up your aggressions yeah….
We’re gonna be wiped out!
Wind me up with evil so I can fight fire with fire
It’s been a great start to the year, musically, and I’ve been trying to hear as much stuff as I possibly can. There’s been some wonderful stuff, some not so good stuff -and no doubt some stuff that I’ll rant about, and yet possibly even change my mind about.
So what’s floated my boat this year so far? Well, I’ve really, really loved the latest eagleowl EP Into The Fold, the closing track ‘No Conjunction’ is without a doubt my song of the year so far. I’ve also been knocked for six by Delorean’s latest album, Subiza, and the Call to Mind EP, all of which got five stars here.
Sure, the scots have had some excellent albums so far this year, what with the sophomore from Meursault, All Creatures Will Make Merry, and debuts from Kid Canaveral and Mitchell Museum. To say nothing of a slew of excellent releases from the likes of Burnt Island, The Scottish Enlightenment, Cancel the astronauts and Fear the Fives.
Further afield, I’ve been loving The Drums, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Dum Dum Girls and the Soft Pack, and the Futureheads have returned with what is clearly their best record since their debut. It’s not all been indie round these parts, though, as you’ll see when I post my review of the latest M.I.A. album, and releases from Konono No.1, Four Tet and Yeasayer have also kept their place around here. I was less than impressed by latest offerings from the likes of The New Pornographers and The National, though…
There’s still another six months left to go, of course, but it’s been great, so far…
Last year, an article in The Wire magazine examined the concept of Hypnagogic pop. This has grown out of the US underground and is where 80’s AOR (think Hall & Oates, Michael McDonald, (both whom whom have cropped up in The Wire’s Invisible Jukebox feature) or Don Henley) meets a post-noise, shoegazing/dreampop aesthetic. Being DIY, the gloss of the 80s production is chipped, but the scene/movement/journalsits trying to come up with something on a wet afternoon has thrown up some excellent work from the likes of The Emeralds, Neon Indian and Ariel Pink.
Having produced a number of his own records on lo(wer-than-thou-)fi equipment, by his standards this release on long-established independent 4AD marks a coming of age for Ariel Pink. It is, howevere, absolutely flaming fantastic. Despite a bizarre press release that talked of vomiting on marble floors and a promo shot of humans snogging animals that I’d rather live without, quite frankly, this twelve track album is a fantastic listen from start to finish. The Americans coined the term ‘dream-op’ to describe what us Brits described as shoegazing, and it’s particularly accurate on a record like this.
Over the course of forty-five minutes this reveals itself as a record filled with gorgeous pop songs, lo-fi not in the sense of’ deliberately recorded to sound as unpolished a s possible’ but as if remembered ‘as a dream -or a dream of a dream.’ (With apologies to C.S. Lewis). This is an album to lose yourself in and find yourself, and if it sounds painfully seventies to talk of something being a headphone album, there is so much to appreciate and wonder at here, that several listens in, I’ve fallen in love with part of it, and wonder what else I have to discover within.
It’s ironic to think that just over ten years ago we thought there would be nothig to excavate from the eighties, or that it would all be conducted in a painful stream of ‘This is what you listened to because we say so.’ This is no eighties revivalism, but rather an excavation and development as important as the likes of DJ Shadow’s entroducing was to 1996.
