Ariel Pink paces frenetically in faded stubbies and purple spike-studded high heels, gesticulating wildly at his crossdressing drummer before telling the audience that they’re all “fucking bogans”. That may have been the most intelligible thing he said all evening; with songs like “Exile on Frog Street” and “Plastic Raincoats at the Pig Parade” filed away in his cannon, intelligibility gives right of way to sheer visceral fun, and it’s all the better for it.
It was perhaps an odd choice to shed the “Haunted Graffiti” moniker at the dawning of Ariel’s most extravagantly ‘anti-solo’ record, but as with last week’s Kimbra review, I can find no fault with the unbridled maximalism that’s put on display. Like Kimbra, Ariel is just too big for simple solo artistry and with Pom Pom, he’s more willing than ever to step away from the lo-fi home recordings of his earlier career. Where “Mature Themes” seemed to hark back to the Paw Tracks days with its insular, mellow recordings, “Pom Pom” ignites in billowing energy with the most glistening songwriting of his career. At a runtime of over an hour and with a total of 17 tracks, Pom Pom models itself after the bold, double album efforts of pop’s past, sounding like a tribute to the ethos that made The Beach Boys’ “Smile” and The Beatles’ “White Album” such grand artistic visions. It shares all the same hallmarks: catchy highlights, wild variety, silly diversions, experimental structures and a sense of journey and destination. This is an album that takes the listener on a trail through the mind of Ariel himself; a schizophrenic, giddy day-trip.
It would be easy to dismiss tracks like “Goth Bomb” or “Nude Beach a Go-go” as untrimmed fluff but, much like The White Album’s “Piggies” and “Rocky Raccoon”, they add to the bulk of the album and make it the experience it is from start to finish. If it were stripped to only 10 songs it would simply lack magic.
The middle sequence of the album carries the lion’s share of these tracks and even in their brief runtimes, they dart back and forth through different ideas like a tuning radio. It sounds like a less cluttered and overwrought version of what Animal Collective were trying to create on “Centipede Hz”, except in place of the psychedelic electronics are the staples of a lifetime of eclectic music appreciation. Ariel shifts through surf rock, glam, disco, middle eastern vibes, advertising jingles, children’s tv theme songs, dub, blues, and power-ballads with such fluidity that nothing feels out of place. All expectations of what music should be are left at the door while Ariel is left to flex his formidably flexible mind. We hear what sound’s like pure Roger Waters vocals on the dark and brewing “Four Shadows” and a shimmering, sun-drenched outro on “Sexual Athletics” that resembles an amalgamation of The Beach Boys and Panda Bear. We’re even treated to a homage to The Beatle’s “A Day In The Life” with the orchestral swell of “Exile on Frog Street”.
Despite these reference points, you would struggle to call this music derivative. Ariel’s sound is unlike anything else while simultaneously being everything else. Like the great works that inspired it, it manages to trace a journey through a tapestry of pop music that feels wholly greater than the sum of its parts.
This is the incredible new video for “Dayzed Inn Daydreams” featuring Rick Wilder of The Mau-Mau’s. Warning: it brings the feels.
You can grab a copy of Pom Pom over at 4AD
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