Ariel Pink
Dedicated To Bobby Jameson

THE REVIEW

I understood, along the endless listens and new releases to go through (use and throw away perhaps), that retromania is a nasty beast; a cat to skin. I realize that 99% of artists perform between rot and decay with those musical corpses—exhumed way too many times—of which only shreds of nerves and tendons remain attached to a bone full of holes like Swiss cheese.

Ariel Pink?
Ariel Pink no.
Ariel Pink no no no, NO! ARIEL PINK NO!

Ariel Pink isn’t retro because he’s trendy, people want quotes from kitsch fairy tales and often it's no longer even kitsch but post-trash that's revolting; Maracaibo pre-adolescent nostalgic memories? Terrible! Ariel Pink is truly living those moments between childhood and puberty, he is a perpetual child, as much as Peter Pan and his neverland are those years.
The new romantic frivolousness and zappa-esque absurdities, the Sabbath-like gothicism (also present in the cover), and the American psychedelia of the late sixties—an island within the island. A hodgepodge of pastiche, meticulously selected and sewn together to turn out fresh and genuine, and they certainly are.
Perhaps it may sound less powerful and aggressive, perhaps it is not joyful and sugary. The sing-a-along is not the crucial part and the lyrics do not rise above past works, but there is compactness, a search for himself, the rendering of being part of another world and of being now a cult object and source of inspiration.
It would be nice for him to disappear forever and not just for 25 years like the almost lamented Bobby.

P.S.: for Time To Live a special note is needed: Residents, Chrome, Red Krayola with Buggles and AOR, perhaps his best piece written so far.