30 seconds into an Ariel Pink show at the Empty Bottle a couple weeks ago, Ariel stage-dived into a crowd that wasn't there to catch him. Our heart goes out to Ariel and his jacked up ribs.
But it also seems fitting that an artist who has become synonymous with solitary, no-fi home recording would end wounded in a vulnerable venture out in the big wide world. Ariel Pink is one of my favorite pop musicians, one of the best of a genre that I like to call "Shut-In Pop."
Shut-In Pop is built around a production style that balances glistening pop aspiration with the emotional heft of compulsive home recording. It's the sound of AM Gold filtered through the monastic solitude of parent's basements and crummy tape decks. It's the sound of social misfits who find confidence controlling a personal musical world.
That is, it's the sound of the ultra-prolific R. Stevie Moore.
It's easy to write-off the Shut-In Pop of today as a Moore rip-off, feigning social disfunction for "authenticity." But they, like we the listeners, find this sonic space to be one of creepy intimacy that touches the depressed, romantic, arrogant, adolescent in us. So why not keep exploring it? Stay inside. Stay weird.
Here's some of the new breed of Shut-Ins:
why am i going out tonight? i want to lock my bedroom door and listen to lowfi am radio psych pop!
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