Stay out of this thread if you don't anticipate Ariel Pink - Mature Themes

21/8/2012

http://www.gorillavsbear.net/2012/06/07/mp3-new-ariel-pink-baby-donnie-emerson-cover/

love this track, good luck on hoping for a hater-free ariel pink thread tho

Huh - Light in the Attic have JUST re-issued that Donnie & Joe Emerson record!

(which I now see they cover in that blog post - whoops - anyway, sounds great!)

I heard the Donnie & Joe "Baby" in a video store yesterday--had no idea what it was, so I asked the clerk. What a fantastic song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONIJXHvoynw

http://cdn03.cdn.gorillavsbear.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ARIEL-PINK-MATURE-THEMES-575x575.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIcSLsOc5ZQ

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/c0.124.403.403/p403x403/548428_10151895023430265_1582717101_n.jpg

new song sux

new record sux

"The coming of the beta male" barf

New song is a bit pedestrian (bass line) but still looking forward to the album.

can't wait to weird out visitors to my apartment with that magazine cover.

http://www.leaksallday.com/index.php

After one listen it seems like "Baby" is by a distance the best thing on the album. It seems kind of grating on the whole

and if Baby is the best song, that's a bad sign

Completely agree, Baby is the best song on an otherwise highly disappointing album.

I've been an Ariel fan since The Doldrums, and this is by far the worst - and only bad - album he's released so far. Whether it was falling-ass-backwards-in-weed lo-fi screwery, hazy 70s am radio tunes from outer space or a very concise exercise and thoughtful approach (the last album), this is all over the place and leaves me nowhere. It's a lost sound, a lost album. I had high hopes this would be an album full of 'Only in my Dreams' and 'Baby' tunes, perfecting the sound and craftsmanship and focus of the previous album. Instead, this is a horrible collection of half-assed songs. Bitterly disappointed.

Bummer. I don't really like Only In My Dreams so if that's a high point, it sounds like trouble.

Well, 'Baby' is the true high point, but 'Only in my Dreams' comes after that. Which indeed is trouble.

Still can't believe it actually, how he could have followed up such a stellar album, that made them huge, with such a load of wank. Then again, maybe that is just true Ariel Pink style.

Personally I've always sailed through the criticism and loved every album for different reasons, throughout his career. But this is just bad.

Btw Baby is Ariel doing Motown and fucking works. The fucker should do 12 tunes like that ffs.

(suppose it's still not allowed to share download links? Been away for a long time, don't want to be banned)

trying to pinpoint what's putting me off on some of it (and maybe it'll still grow on me). a lot of the stranger tunes aren't that far from what you hear on, say, Scared Famous

maybe it's in presenting his early, kookier kind of songs all polished and ready-for-radio-sounding - removing the static/goop but not the structural/thematic-silliness - that suddenly just makes them feel like inconsequential novelty songs, rather than deranged memories or whatever. he pulled off the transition to cleanness/pure pop on the last album... I think it's just that the more 'broken' stuff being spun as would-be pop here ends up coming across slightly Weird Al.

although I think the strangeness works better as the album progresses

wouldn't really want a more normal/pop Ariel Pink tho - not implying strangeness is a bad thing (personally, I lean the opposite way usually). think what works for me here is less jokey/novelty-sounding and more dreamy/pretty

wouldn't really want a more normal/pop Ariel Pink tho - not implying strangeness is a bad thing (personally, I lean the opposite way usually). think what works for me here is less jokey/novelty-sounding and more dreamy/pretty

― Chris S, Friday, July 20, 2012 11:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

COuldn't have put it better myself. I am a great fan of all the "strange" tunes and sounds of yesteryears, but on this record it just sounds out of place. I wouldn't say forced, but it just doesn't sound like it belongs here.

On the jokeyness: I think I'd prefer it if it was truly out there, how we've learned to love Ariel's strangest tunes. But the songs on here (the 'Schnitzle' and 'Nymph' songs) seem stuck between intentional "jokeyness" and spontaneity, ending up being neither.

agreed. the potential to pull off sublime weirdness is still in him - that recent album with R. Stevie Moore was on another level imo

just think the pop/weirdness ratio here is slightly off or something

Yeah, the R. Stevie Moore collab was next level. On the new album the balance between pop and weirdness just feels off, which is very odd as up till Before Today that was all he had been doing, and doing brilliantly.

I also have difficulty envisioning this album being a success live, compared to the tunes on Before Today, that has half a dozen anthems on them and with which they made it big.

(ugh, I don't want to be the generic guy slagging off Ariel Pink's new album for the sake of it, if that is the impression I am giving here. Quite the contrary, he's one of my all time favorite artists. Which makes the new album all the more incomprehensible and disappointing, for me)

not getting that impression at all. Enjoying your posts

I too am enjoying your posts but it's a bit depressing

what if he did a full on strings-heavy Philly soul album

Thanks NN, that's good to hear.

Have you heard the new record?

xp

@blank: I here thee

yeah, you articulated my dislike of it really well. Listened twice and honestly don't see myself going back to it

Yeah, I can sympathize. I'll play it some more because it's compulsory, but it doesn't give that glimmer of hope that it's a true "grower" of an album, at all.

Well on a positive note, I wasnt aware of the R Stevie Moore collab album before this thread.

I kind of wonder if the relative crossover success of Before Today might be coloring our reception of this album a little actually. like if he were still just weird and misunderstood Ariel Pink, and not the Godfather of Chillwave now, this could just be regarded as yet another interesting-enough oddity in his massive, inpenetrable tape catalog, whereas now we're judging it by more crossover pop criteria

As an enormous fan, I judged all his previous albums by how pop friendly (ie enjoyable) they were.. I didn't have any expectations for the new one; I think Before Today is his worst album (but it still rules)

I've usually listened to him as a unique kind of psychedelia, but yeah def also as a pop artist as well - always so many great little melodies and hooks in his stuff

I guess the album kind of reminds me of his older stuff so I'm trying to figure out if I'm just judging him by slightly different standards now, but I think both in terms of pop and psychedelia it still falls a little short. I don't think it's that bad though. if it were one of his old tapes I suppose I would judge it a little differently

agree about the fact that the songs here are too weird/jokey and much less poppy.what made him great was the balance between the two which is gone.
another big problem is the production:it seems he tried to make a lo-fi sound again but with a full band instead of only him playing the instruments.the result is a thin, dull sound.

still, there is the slight possibility it's a grower. but who's got the patience/time.

I kind of wonder if the relative crossover success of Before Today might be coloring our reception of this album a little actually. like if he were still just weird and misunderstood Ariel Pink, and not the Godfather of Chillwave now, this could just be regarded as yet another interesting-enough oddity in his massive, inpenetrable tape catalog, whereas now we're judging it by more crossover pop criteria

― Chris S, Saturday, July 21, 2012 12:38 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know what you are getting at, but also feel I am not part of the "we" you speak about. He's never been "weird and misunderstood" to me, while I excepted - and experienced - he was like that to most people.
To me, Ariel's greatest successes are from before 'Before Today'. I completely understand why that album made him so big, and deservedly so, but looking at his whole oeuvre it was a new direction/something of a one off at the time. Now he seems to have gone back to what he once did, yet falls helplessly through the standard deemed acceptable, which is odd and loose and lenient to begin with given his standards and talent to 'roam' and touch upon weirdness. It is sub-par, it's like 'Before Today' doesn't exist, was never written. Because the new record certainly doesn't sound like he took anything from that. Maybe that is what troubles me most about the new record: whatever way he'd gone on this new one, I'd have accepted it and loved it, if it were sincere. But there are no traces of the craftsmanship from Before Today.

I guess the album kind of reminds me of his older stuff so I'm trying to figure out if I'm just judging him by slightly different standards now,

I would have loved this album to be a return to his older stuff, but in my ears it's not. It genuinely sounds like a collection of B-sides (or in Ariel's case D-sides). Take the solo dedication that is dripping from the Doldrums, or the team-effort sounding through 'Before Today'. That focus, that determination, and genius. I can't hear it on this record.

It just doesn't sound like a record made by a band, it sounds like Ariel tweaking about in his bedroom or in the van on tour. Which just doesn't make sense.

I like this album

♫~eatin' schnitzel~♫

Where can I hear that 'Baby' cover!!!!??? I love that song.

this is easily my favorite record of the last five or six years. it is a bizarre weirdo pop masterpiece, and the world is better for having it and mr. pink. fucking testify

"before today" is better

kind of wonder if the relative crossover success of Before Today might be coloring our reception of this album a little actually. like if he were still just weird and misunderstood Ariel Pink, and not the Godfather of Chillwave now, this could just be regarded as yet another interesting-enough oddity in his massive, inpenetrable tape catalog, whereas now we're judging it by more crossover pop criteria

― Chris S, Friday, July 20, 2012 6:38 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i agree with this. i like the album. apart from the production it doesn't strike me as that different from the rest of his stuff. also, tbh "before today" has some stuff i really don't like, despite the high points. same goes for all his stuff, really. i've had almost all the released albums rotating and it's all kind of blending together. some of its fuckin awesome weird pop and some of it doesn't work, i kind of accept that with this dude and can enjoy it all.

mature themes is also hilarious! "who sunk my battleship? i sunk my battleship!"

I think 'farewell american' is pretty great. Instrumentation is so close to 'round and round' to be a bit distracting, but I don't mind

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