I hear his live show is terrible, but three out of the four songs I've heard so far have been really fucking cool and weird, thus a tentative Not Crap. It really is just like seventies AM rock radio heard in your sleep, fragmented and strangely tuneful and incredibly poorly recorded, which latter seems actually sonically effective for once. More insane, better songs, better source material, and less smarmy than Beck, while mining a similar retro(grade) idiot-savant thing, maybe.

The live show is so incredibly bad that it's almost good.

Hands down, the worst performance I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. If I hadn't been waiting to see Slint, I'm sure they would have chased me out of the venue. People were openly guffawing during Ariel Pink's set, and as they milled around onstage after their set, threatening to encore, I shouted out, "No mas! No mas!" Thankfully, they complied.

I spent the entire decade of the 1970's listening to AM radio in my sleep, and nothing that happened on that stage was remotely related to even the most puerile shit I absorbed as a child.

Unredeemable crap.

ctrl-s wrote:I hear his live show is terrible, but three out of the four songs I've heard so far have been really fucking cool and weird, thus a tentative Not Crap. It really is just like seventies AM rock radio heard in your sleep, fragmented and strangely tuneful and incredibly poorly recorded, which latter seems actually sonically effective for once.

Exactly right. Ariel Pink's recorded music is truly enigmatic and compelling.

I have seen him live and it was godawful. I'm somebody that can often find some value in the godawful, but this was not one of those cases. I know a few folks who are borderline-obsessed with him and his CDs and even they thought it was utter shit.

He gets a N/C from me but I am never going to see him play live again.

Wow. I feel fortunate to have heard the stuff before seeing him live, which I now surely never will, until and unless reports change drastically. Think I'll just listen to the songs, thanks.

But now I'm curious: how is the live show bad, exactly? Like, Cat Power nervous-breakdown bad, or just "infuriatingly disorganized / incompetent / half-assed" bad?

ctrl-s wrote:But now I'm curious: how is the live show bad, exactly? Like, Cat Power nervous-breakdown bad, or just "infuriatingly disorganized / incompetent / half-assed" bad?

The latter.

The latter, with "freestyling."

Angus Jung wrote:The latter, with "freestyling."

Okay, I can imagine this. THE HORROR. Thank you.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:Hands down, the worst performance I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. If I hadn't been waiting to see Slint, I'm sure they would have chased me out of the venue. People were openly guffawing during Ariel Pink's set, and as they milled around onstage after their set, threatening to encore, I shouted out, "No mas! No mas!" Thankfully, they complied.

I spent the entire decade of the 1970's listening to AM radio in my sleep, and nothing that happened on that stage was remotely related to even the most puerile shit I absorbed as a child.

Unredeemable crap.

Couldn't agree with you more. I was at the same show and it was painful to sit through their performance (if you can call it that). I thought it was a joke, please tell me it was. Halfway into their set everyone left for the bar for some tasty alcoholic beverages. Fuck Slint for their over priced hooded sweatshirts and putting us through that artfag bullshit crap.

Turbo wrote:Fuck Slint for their over priced hooded sweatshirts and putting us through that artfag bullshit crap.

I might've thought the same thing until I heard Slint play. I think Slint's set's greatness was inversely proportional to Aerial Pink's industrial strength vaccuum sucking power.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:

Turbo wrote:Fuck Slint for their over priced hooded sweatshirts and putting us through that artfag bullshit crap.

I might've thought the same thing until I heard Slint play. I think Slint's set's greatness was inversely proportional to Aerial Pink's industrial strength vaccuum sucking power.

Oh, their set was amazing!! They were so tight and just nailed every song like you were listening to a studio recording. I just think they could have treated their fans with more respect by giving us something decent to listen to as a opening act. I was hurt.