BEA's Year-End List #2: Pom Pom

Anonymous · 2015-02-09T13:07:57-05:00

Pom Pom by Ariel Pink Despite lukewarm reviews from the critics, the latest event in the Ariel Pink circus was very well received on BEA. Ariel Pink is a weird dude, he really is, but sometimes weird guys make the best and most interesting music. Every time I hear Ariel Pink’s music, it always makes me think of one person: Frank Zappa. Pink’s stuff is probably the closest I’ve ever heard to a modern artist sounding like Frank Zappa. It’s the goofiness of the lyrics and the delivery, the insanity, the jumping around through genres with absolute ease, it all sounds a lot like Zappa, which is awesome. It’s just an odd album, it’s an album that has something different and something unexpected around every turn, no two songs sound the same. And perhaps the best part of this album is that, within the weirdness, within the craziness, it’s very accessible. One of Zappa’s few weaknesses at times was that his music was difficult to access, it was kind of heavy and got a little crazy, but “Pom Pom” is very easily accessible, with melodies that’ll get stuck in your head, and songs that are easy to listen to. It’s goofy stuff, but that’s the charm of it all. "I don't know what is going on but I really like it" pop Weirdtastic. Demented bubblegum that goes POP There's a lot of music I adore, and there isn't necessarily any rhyme or reason to my taste. I might love one album for being one thing, and then hate another for being almost that exact same thing. It's dumb as fuck, and it makes giving me recommendations something akin to a game of Russian roulette, but it's the the way I am. However, there are certain signposts that I can use in figuring out whether or not I will like or do like a particular record, and one of them is this: I basically love any music that makes my girlfriend screw up her face and ask, disgusted, "what the fuck is that shit?!?", and Ariel Pink's pom pom passed that particular test with flying colours. It's just an absolutely nuts journey through 1970s AM radio pop, new wave (of both the bright and the gothic varieties), and forgotten TV theme tunes - hell, there's even excursions into heavy blues rock, synth-funk, surf-pop, cosmic dub, and Omar Souleyman-style Syrian wedding music. Lyrically, half of the songs on the record are either uncomfortably perverted or otherwise just downright ridiculous, and I find the best way to deal with the potential problem of deciding whether Pink's ever being sincere or if it's all just a big joke is simply to ignore the question altogether. He paints in garish and gaudy shades of gold and hot pink, and deliberately sabotages some of the album's most beautiful moments with bizarrely inappropriate sound effects or incantations. But then there's that fucking panpipe in 'Lipstick' and I just know that this is pure genius, the work of a merry prankster who wants to force his audience to accept both the sublime and the undeniably ugly, to make them chase down that sugar with a spoonful of bitter medicine. Much like SYRO above, pom pom is just a ridiculously fun and playful journey, an album that revels in fucking shit up for the sake of fucking shit up. It's not even that it's particularly weird, but when it is weird it is being so deliberately. And, just like a child pulling the stupidest, ugliest faces possible just because he's a child and fuck it why not be disgusting, it's completely infectious. This whole album has a childlike sense of wonder, and occasionally it crosses that line into childishness and a desire to just fuck shit up, which only makes it more endearing to me. Maybe it's because I work in a school, but if a child gurns at me, I'll gurn back twice as hard until the little fucker starts laughing uncontrollably. And that's what this album is; a 'who can make the ugliest face?' competition followed by a moment of genuine joy with a charming, horrible child. Q: Who can't get enough of this? A: SuedeSwede wtf hahaha some proper trolling on this record. Very funny.

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SquishypuffDave Profile

This album is some dark shit. If anything it reminds me of Mr Bungle's 'California'. Very happy to see it at #2.

benpaco Who's gonna watch you die? Profile
Missouri

Sad to see none of the albums I voted for make it, but I'm not surprised. My only shot was hoping that Graeme, Secondsoul, and myself would push Twilight Sad's in at like 10.

Honestly, I'm betting this for number 1: