Recently overground if not quite yet over exposed, Ariel Pink and crew transcend pastiche to serve up something fresh and inventive. Though more than just another band from LA, it is the City of Angels that most define their sound and mind-set. The lineage offers a magpie patchwork of styles and influences: most noticeably schizophrenic tempo changes a la Love through to 70s & 80s laid back west coast funk-lite, happily daring to slap the bass along the way. The occasional 80s arrangements are not as irritating as the prospect might sound.
Ariel Pink is clearly the mind in charge. Like a less parochial and more original (and talented) Bobby Gillespie, he press gangs his record collection to the service of his imagination and to channel the creation of something new and exciting. Let's hope Ariel and his singular talent stay the course.
Oddi wrth y brawd
clog dance
4 comments:
Now this is spooky. I had this very album in my hand yesterday whilst browsing the racks in HMV Cardiff. Not having heard anything by AP and Co but somewhat curious following recent UNCUT article I was a bit put off by £14 price tag thinking it a bit steep for an impulse buy and resolved to check it out on Spotify first. This I am now doing and lo and behold up pops your post!! Will form (and maybe inform of) considered opinion in due course.
Well there we are. Not just a repository of old sh1t but finger occasionaly on the pulse.
Look forward to the PVY rating - though I have a feeling you're going to be harsh.
Not so, not so. After an initial jolt, as a result of it not being quite what I imagined, I was quite taken with this. Less Hollywood than NYC psychedelia infused with a bit of Bowie and some James Brown on acid, a smidgeon of art-rock, a pinch of Tubes at their disco-cheese "best" and some rather less welcome turn of the 80s airbrush AOR. Results are pleasing enough if missing the primitive spark of "Doldrums", which I've also been listening to (recorded on a portable cassette recorder hidden in a towel or so it sounded).
But, pray, how can anyone be more talented than Bobby Gillespie?
80s airbrush production...soft spot catered. Y brawd may be the only sentient being who rates jeff lynne's productions of Tom Petty as TP's best. Uh-oh, y brawd feels a post coming on.
(Booby Gilliespie - admittedly, y brawd was including originality as one of the determinants of talent; however, in this post-structuralist world where "Derrida is da writer" this view is well passe)
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