Review Archive Series #3: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti 8, Worn Copy cd

The following review represents one in a series of reviews published during my tenure as the resident music critic and assistant Arts Editor for The Phoenix, the official student newspaper of UBC-Okanagan in Kelowna, B.C. They are being reprinted here because I feel that while these reviews might represent a point of serious-suckitude in the developement of my writing, they are examples of my earliest attempts at criticism (if jerking off on an album's cover can be considered criticism), and above all: these albums desperately deserve the attention of your tinnitus-damaged ears.



















Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti 8, Worn Copy
Paw Tracks, 2005

Imagine that you built yourself an odd time machine, one that would not necessarily transport you physically into the past, but would tune your consciousness to a late 1970's dial, causing you to live forever caught in a mental rerun: transported to a hazy haunted realm of poisoned Air Supply sucked dry and made equals menacing and goofy, with the glam of Ziggy Stardust, and the banal pop A.M. light radio gone violent and junk-sick vampire a la Near Dark. Now imagine that something weirdly wrong has happened, real weird, and not just the decade doesn't sound as it should, nothing does. If the things you hear and see are lo-fi beyond compare, abrasively acid-washed, obstructed, and abstracted to near-Dadaist lengths, this time machine, your stereo, has obviously tuned you into 2005's Worn Copy, the latest offering from obscurist pop eccentric Ariel Pink. It would be irresponsible of me to tell you, that if you listen to enough of Worn Copy, cloud your head with it, you will honestly never want to leave the place your mind travels to. Just start listening to it, day and day-glo night, and prove me wrong ("The Drummer", "Creepshow", or "Credit" wouldn't be a bad start for the A.P. curious). There are no suggestions I can offer you, brave traveller, nothing I can say could possibly be of aid to your ears. The only advice I can offer you is this: be careful, for these are strange times.

Exact review date unknown.