Issue date: 7/31/08 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Flickr/Creative Commons Ariel Pink and the Haunted Graffiti put on powerful show in small Chicago venue.

Media Credit: Flickr/Creative Commons Ariel Pink's performances rally energetic response from audiences, if not from the critics.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti's 2008 tour, entitled "Thanks Mom I'm Dead," came to the Empty Bottle last Saturday night. Entertainment media will warn you, if you want to go to an Ariel Pink event, that you are playing Russian roulette with your leisure dollars. The New York Times said his shows "have a reputation as shambolic train wrecks." And Pitchfork said, "Ariel Pink's rep as a live act is spotty, with reports of sound problems and sets cut short by tantrums."

Please do not be intimidated by these reviews. In 2005 I saw him open for Animal Collective at the University of Chicago in Ida Noyes Hall. It was a big ballroom-type space, and Pink had a three-piece backing band. They did not sound like a band, more like one big echo. They smoked a lot of cigarettes onstage, and Pink paced back and forth (on a four-step path) with his head down and the microphone in his hand. It was not a spotty wreck. It was menacing, powerful, and purposeful.

I still think about the performance a lot, and how urgent it felt to me. I found out later that Pink's younger sister had been in a car accident shortly before that tour, putting her into a coma.

Ariel Pink home-recorded a lot of 8-track pop songs in LA in the 90s and early 00s but was not discovered until Animal Collective got ahold of one of his CDRs in 2004. The Animal Collective guys then made that CDR, "The Doldrums," into a real CD (and LP). It was the first non-Animal Collective release on their label, Paw Tracks. All of his albums are very much worth your time.

Last week, Pink's backup band, the Haunted Graffiti, was a quartet: a guitar player, a bass player, a drummer, and a keyboard player who sometimes played guitar. The backup vocals, contributed primarily from the drummer and keyboard player, were an animated mess of whooshes, hisses and croons. Pink's voice was especially expressive, moving from a melodramatic warble (that was so melodramatic it became dramatic again) to a smooth and squeaky falsetto to a carnival bark.

The set was more traditional than those of his last two tours. (For the 2006 tour, local bands could e-mail Pink's publicist and become his backing band for the show in their hometown. Notably, Excepter got to do New York City.)

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti ran through a lengthy list of Ariel's catchiest and most rocking material. And the Empty Bottle's PA delivered, too. The show was loud, but every detail (of which there are so many in Pink's music) could be heard perfectly. The band performed with the confidence and chops I expect only from more prominent artists, and the audience responded accordingly. The place was packed, people screamed after every song, and a good portion of the crowd was dancing. Ariel Pink was whiny, but charismatically so. At one point, for banter, Pink and his drummer mentioned something about numbers and 9/11 that served as clues to a conspiracy, and I wish I had recorded it. By the end of the performance, I had come to realize that while Pink's music is not the critic's delight, it is well worth the risk they purport to see one of his "shambolic train wrecks" of a show.

matt.bryan.weir@gmail.com

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