Critiques CD: Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti

Ariel Pink’s followup to his 2010 breakthrough Before Today takes a page right out of Frank Zappa’s playbook, but heavily affected with hazy new wave influences. Track after track evokes conflicting gut reactions to Pink’s bizarro sense of humor. He seems content to laugh at himself, but one can never be sure they’re in on the joke; perhaps most of all in “Symphony of the Nymph”, his fantastical self-portrait of a nymphomaniac rock-and-roller from Beverly Hills. Though amusing all the way through, the songs run a bit long at times with their guitar-and-bass-in-space excursions before you snap out of a synth-induced trance to a sudden tempo change or revelatory lyric. In “Early Birds of Babylon”, this moment comes at the top of a lengthy course of thick ambient rambling when Pink spurts his quirky take on scat-singing and then wonders aloud, “Hey, how does he do that?” Moments like this arise from time to time, where you feel you’ve been let in on the gag, but then Pink subsequently pulls out an absurdity like “Schnitzel Boogie” and we’re back to square one. Mature Themes is thick with these points of interest. But when an artist doesn’t take himself too seriously, this sort of obtuseness hits the right mark without being too daunting or alienating to enjoy.