We Have to Talk About Ariel Pink, I Guess
The year was 2012. The place was Tumblr. The age was 16. The man was Ariel Pink.
These are the stage directions for the entrance of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti into my humble life. I had lost my grandmother around that time, so I filled the void caused by grief and the ill-timed start of a new diet with Brazilian telenovelas and lo-fi psychedelic music. Both are extremely underrated. I will be the first defender of a good Brazilian soap — make no mistake, the production value is insane. Very different from the Guided By Voices album I was trying so hard to like. I still don’t think I “get it,” by the way.
You know what I got instantly? Before Today.
I had known of Ariel Pink because he got name-dropped in every single interview my teenage fangirl self read on NME. But, in that abstract, remote historical figure sort of way. Like a dead president who did great things. I knew he existed. I knew he made really influential music that touched the hearts and ears of every single long-haired musician I totally did not have a crush on, but had I decided to hear said music myself? No, not really. After the whole Guided By Voices fiasco the lo-fi label scared me (as it did him), and I wasn’t as edgy as I am now when it came to enjoying the avant-garde. So, I procrastinated and cheated my way into the Ariel Pink storyline by skipping ahead to the 4AD saga.
If you need more information on this, let me plug my new Youtube channel where I post very pretentious music documentaries as inspired by Adam Curtis. We just made an Ariel Pink episode and I think you should watch it.
I loved Before Today. “Bright Lit Blue Skies” was the go-to surfy jangle jam at the time — no, Mac Demarco wasn’t really a thing outside of Makeout Videotape back then. A lot of people credit Ariel Pink with many things, but I’d like to credit him as the original bedroom bandcamp-pop jangler. He had nothing to do with what we call chillwave these days, sorry.
There’s a video for that, too. You’re welcome.
Like many, I made the silly mistake of believing Ariel was Ariel Pink and the rest of them were the Haunted Graffiti. I understand this fact disturbs him greatly. I also have to apologize, yet excuse my own confusion, because I’d like to ask who ever thought otherwise. I don’t think I’m outnumbered and that says a lot. So, I understood this to be a band effort. It was polished. It was chiseled. It sounded a little goofy, but I absolutely adored the retro spooky melancholia of “Fright Night Nevermore.” It made me feel like an angsty superhero — which in hindsight, is what any little hipster’s self-image strives to be.
Well, I will have you know: Ariel is not Ariel Pink. Ariel is Ariel Rosenberg. “Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti” was the name of the project under which he released the music that made him famous. There were others. One of them was called “Ariel Rosenberg’s Thrash and Burn.”
I think this is the first clue as to where our relationship, as listeners and fans, with Ariel himself went very wrong.
No matter how obvious it may seem to us that someone called Ariel, who releases music as Ariel Something’s Something is said Ariel Something, Ariel is just Ariel. In this case, he was Ariel Something Else.
What I find so astounding about Ariel Pink and this whole thing with him getting dropped by Mexican Summer after being associated with the Trump Capitol Riots of January 6th, is that I don’t really feel duped or fooled. I was loosely following Ariel during the Mature Themes release — though I was much more captivated by the St. Vincent David Byrne collaboration that came out at that time, when is the sequel of that happening fellas? — but, by the time pom pom happened, and I saw even people I actually knew IRL mention it as one of their favorite records of the year, I began to worry. It was getting very mainstream. Admittedly, this mostly bothered me because I had this idea of Ariel Pink as an alternative, unknown demi-god who made godly, obscure music that we had a hard time finding — what we can now call the “Paw Tracks” releases. I don’t keep up with music scene gossip too much, so I was still in the dark about his antics. But, I kept loving his music. Pom pom was kind of a handful because, at the time, I had just started hosting a shoegaze college radio show and I was looking to discover more niche releases. It was so quirky yet grandiose. Ambitious, prog pop of the poppiest pinkiest order. It felt a little out of my league.
Then, I don’t know. I guess I just forgot about Ariel Pink. I disconnected from the world of music and barely did anything but check out the Youtube channel Phone Sex to get a kick out of new artists. Yes, this is awkward to search for on Youtube and I’m sure my IP address is on a couple of lists right now. But at least, we all know it was for a good cause!
And then, from the comfort of the couch that gave me my angstiest 16-year-old moments, while in a quarantine holiday limbo, I was delighted to discover that he was the object of a controversy that involved the unofficial Village People reunion that was the capitol riot.
I am not here to argue whether he was there or not. He claimed to be on a field. How close the field was to the main event is not the point of this, and the point is coming very soon, I swear. We all know by now that I struggle with this, guys. As soon as I knew about this, I had to look into it. I started devouring any interview I could find that involved Ariel. Originally, I was going to make a follow-up to my documentary debut examining the liminal zones within hypnagogic pop, but then I realized Ariel’s relationship with the media made for a far more compelling narrative to explore this music through.
There was so much talk of change. Of someone being “cancelled” or #MeTood (also, can we veto this becoming a verb, for obvious reasons and the fact that I hate typing it). But he’s never been any different. Go to the wayback machine and see for yourself. Ariel Pink always had a boner for speaking his mind in a very brash way… not unlike that of my mother. She doesn’t give a damn about getting on others’ nerves. It’s all about the cathartic desire to be. I don’t know that it’s the same for him.
And that’s the thing: I don’t know. Neither does Pitchfork, nor my beloved Stereo Gum and my even more beloved and defunct Tiny Mixtapes. I realize this sounds a little contradictory, considering I made a documentary about the dude, but I did so piecing together a narrative of things he said. All descriptors and claims were extracted from things he’d said. We can all agree — him too, trust me — that he talks a lot, so it’s not like I was lacking in source material. The only outsider description I found myself growing particularly fond of, the more I read about him, was the apt “Jim Morrison as written and played by Woody Allen.” Like, damn, that is one dead-on way of putting his energy into words. Chaotic self-consciousness. All wrapped into one 4AD record sleeve riddled with tape hiss.
There’s a ton of speculation going around the troll theory: people who assume he does what he does to generate publicity and make others talk. He did admit to understanding that journalists had a habit of extrapolating the most controversial statements of his from interviews, in order to make clickbait headlines to bring up during their next performance evaluation, to score that double digit promotion. He understood it. I’ve worked as a journalist hungry for humiliation (granted, I was making exposes on health centers, so there was a lot less at stake), and I understand that, too.
You see, being an interviewer is kind of like being an interrogator. The only way to not incriminate yourself is not speaking.
And that is something Ariel was never able to do. Whether it’s a strategy or a habit is potentially the great mystery of our generation’s hipsterdom. But, we can all agree it’s a dangerous game when played incorrectly.
2021 is not the time where most can afford to risk. My mom hates it. It’s a bit of a gamble. If you wanna gamble, you gotta be ready to lose. Which is why I haven’t gambled at any point before the making of “From Coachella to the Capitol.” Despite my deep desire to remain neutral, I felt compelled to present all facets of the Ariel Pink package that we receive, as fans.
Because, quite honestly, I’m not sure it’s our place to care what the “real Ariel Pink” (which as a concept doesn’t even exist, he’s Ariel Rosenberg) thinks or does or why. Most of us don’t have personal relationships with him — meaning beyond a screen, or outside of a mediated, journalistic enterprise.
As fans, we will have a reaction to the choices he makes. That is a fact, and it is inevitable. You lift a finger, Pitchfork has a headline. In my personal opinion, Ariel’s recent legal debacles are a little more serious than lifting a finger, so the reactions have the right to vary. There’s a lot of vitriol on both sides of the issue: tons of socially-minded fans are now jaded and torn, dreading to listen to his music and going on existential tirades about where art ends and personhood begins, and the more skeptic, edgier crowd who is eager to hop on the devil’s advocate clout club, using this as an opportunity to connect with a burnt, yet still undeniably extremely influential person, under the guise of not caring about the politics, which is a more badass way of not being like the other girls, I guess. It’s a complex issue that affects people in different ways.
But, unless you’re John Maus or one of the tight circle of close friends and family that Ariel keeps around these days, your opinion is likely to be bullshit.
Not to you, of course, but, in the grand scheme of things, you’re reacting to the information you have received. It’s the same reason we all now think Ariel’s opinions are bullshit: he reacted to the information he received. What information that was to inspire these fervent sentiments, is yet another mystery.
As a public figure, he reaps what he sows. He wanted to be heard. The consequence of that is being remembered. Fame is nothing but endless, persistent memory. To be “famous” is to be known and constantly remembered. Legacy is built upon memories. The burden of that mythic legacy involves being scrutinized intensely because one is so often remembered. He has the right to speak his mind, of course, but so do the people that have provided to his livelihood for the last twenty-five years of him making music. It goes both ways.
It is not my place to say whether it’s wrong to be political, though I’m not too fond of his most recent takes. If it wasn’t for those takes, I would have never gone back in time and finally listened to Worn Copy, which has since surpassed anything else I’d heard of his, in terms of my Ariel Pink discography rankings. And, isn’t that the opposite of being “cancelled,” anyway?
