Opinions of Ariel Pink‘s music range from calling it revolutionary to dismissing it as noise. The range of critique for his live shows is even greater. Friday night, The Echo hosted Ariel Pink along with three opening acts.
Belong, the first act on stage, inspired me to go home and listen to every Kevin Shields record I own. For the most part, this set consisted of ambient drones and noise guitars. The mood was heightened by images and films being projected on their backdrop. All in all this was a good set and in hindsight better than most of the following acts.
Gris Gris and Indian Jewelry followed thereafter, and to be honest, their sets were not that entertaining. Both of the bands had promising starts but as their sets wore on, monotony started taking hold. This was displayed as parts of the crowd were making pilgrimages to go have cigarettes or plain leaving the show. Talking to a few audience members, the main gripe about these sets seemed to be their lack of melodic direction. Besides, the crowd really wanted Ariel Pink to get on stage to see what the fuzz was about.
After a short set up break between the bands, Ariel Pink entered the stage. The set up of his equipment did not take a long time since it consisted of a mic, his patented Casio keyboard, an old school 8-Track tape recorder and a Ross plastic bag full of tapes. That was iteven though stage presence was far from the Echo that night, you had to love this guy. Our local hero would put on a tape, sing to it for a while in what seemed like Kareoke, and turn off the tape when he’d get bored. The only noise you heard between the songs was Ariel Pink rummaging through his Ross bag for the next tape to sing along to. Believe me, if the crowd knew all his lyrics, they would have sang along.
Halfway through this set, perhaps for aesthetics sake, three girls took the stage and started dancing along. At this point, the crowd got a bit more into it even though you could spot boredom in the crowd and quite a few started to leave. Highlights of the night definitely included the song “For Kate I Wait”. This semi-parody of 80’s rock ballad and love songs is, and I accept it, charming and catchy enough to be a crowd pleaser.
In conclusion, you have to give Ariel Pink credit. Specially in this town were image IS what makes a band, there is something fresh about someone making a karaoke set out of a concert. Ariel Pink has admitted in interviews that he is not a performer, he is a studio musician. This point was proved on Friday night. So I guess we’ll all wait for the next studio album from Ariel Pink to be judges of his music. After all, that’s what he would want us to do.
