Overview

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, as the solo project of Ariel Rosenberg (whom I will refer to as Ariel Pink, his artistic pseudonym from now on), came to be in the late 00s, in times where the musical panorama wasn’t very clear: MGMT has just shaken the pop genre with Oracular Spectacular, hip-hop music wasn’t really as socially relevant as it is today, and IDM was on its final and sloppy downfall. From this panorama, Ariel Pink emerged as the nostalgic artist, he who wasn’t yet done with the sounds of 70s and 80s pop, he who saw in this age a craft-table in which to experiment and from which brilliant woodwork could be obtained.

Before Today (2010)

Before Today (2010) received notorious critical acclaim (in fact, one of its lead singles,Round and Round, was Pitchfork’s Song of the Year). From then on, he released several EPs ans LPs, such as Mature Themes (2012) which, on average, received mixed reviews.

Pom Pom (2014)

Pom Pom was, in a way, a surprise for Pink’s fans. With very little anticipation and not as many singles as usual, this album dropped on late 2014. I’m not an avid fan of him, but having heard the (not so interesting) direction which he had decided to take with his latest material, it was refreshing to listen to tracks that lied within Ariel’s comfort zone, but weren’t very reliant on, say, 70s fashion of detuning guitars randomly, or 80s synthpop. Instead, to me, pom pom is a collection of tracks released during the times when Gary Numan’s Cars was a hit, or when Kraftwerk was still popular, but from a parallel dimension, and for two main reasons. Let me elaborate on each:

  • The lyrics don’t follow a single theme. For instance, White Freckles follows a narrator in the search for the origin of a girl’s beauty (which he finds in its freckles); Lipstick (which is a rework of Ariel’s older material) tells the story of an old-fashioned, love-fueled murder; and Black Ballerina tells the story of a kid and his uncle visiting a bloody exotic dance club! Ariel’s brilliance, in part, lies in the fluency he manages between the different narrators and characters he portrays in each of his songs.

  • There is a very wide stream of influences on each of pom pom’s tracks. On the opening track, White Raincoats in the Big Parade, Pink seems to be grabbing a bit from the 70s avant-garde. The interruptions in-between choruses really reminded me of Velvet Underground’s later work; quite literally in the next track, White Freckles, he goes on to work on a two-part track, with a different song composition on each, which is a bit reminiscent of 80s progressive rock. I’d like to highlight that the use of 7/8 notation (which is nowhere to be seen in pop music of Ariel’s contemporaries) fits the track neatly, and finds no problem in transitioning back into 4/4 notation at the end.

  • The first half of the album is amazing. However, it kind of begins to stutter. Put Your Number in my Phone is a great track. A melodic, romantic sort-of ballad, but its follow up, One Summer Night, cut off the sentimental tone of the previous track quite abruptly, and introduced a somewhat monotonous and trivial song. From this point on, in my opinion, the album loses a bit of its focus. Perhaps it is the intention to make it a compilation of songs instead of a cohesive collection of songs, but Sexual Athletics and Exile on Frog Street didn’t fit into Pom Pom‘s look and feel. They sounded too this-worldly, not belonging to Ariel Pink music’s timeline from the 70s and 80s which I mentioned earlier. The final track, nevertheless, is a very powerful close-up to a surprisingly satisfactory album. Dazed Inn Daydreams returns to Ariel’s two-part song structure: the first section is an I would say midwest-inspired ballad, which calls upon people’s desires and dreams of the future, and waiting: the gap between reality and fantasy.:

All in all, Pom Pom is a very strong set of songs, which do not transition onto each other, but rather, complement one another, and make up for Pink’s best album since Before Today. He proudly wears his influences in a way that feels refreshingly innovative. Its single power is notorious, having tracks such as White Freckles and Lipstick which could easily be material for Top 100 radio, but the lackluster moments in the album come at the cost of the album’s overall momentum.