Mature Themes

Rolling Stone (p.76) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "The music gives the whimsy weight. 'Only in My Dreams' channels the Byrds via the La's..." Billboard (p.26) - "[They] stick to the sound that brought them wider notice, submitting creamy soft-rock melodies reminiscent of 10cc and Spandau Ballet to all kinds of trippy synth-freak manipulations." Q (Magazine) (p.97) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "'Only In My Dreams'' Byrdsian jangle and the effortless breeze of the title track offer simple pleasures..." Mojo (Publisher) (p.86) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Ariel Pink and his band still skitter about on the margins but the asylum is well and truly under their grubby, long-nailed thumbs." Paste (magazine) - "MATURE THEMES is a bubbling word stew, an absurdist stream-of-conscious pastiche ladled atop a bed of Oingo Boingo-style '80s ray-gun synth pop by a psychedelic 8-bit videogame Captain Beefheart."

To anyone familiar with his music, it's obvious that Ariel Pink is weird, but it bears repeating: Ariel Pink is really weird. It's also not a surprise that he's a (self-professed) "nympho" either, but he sheds more light on that throughout Mature Themes, which is both his most accomplished album and some of his most twistedly immature music. As on Before Today, the album's sound is just a shade clearer than what came before it, and his backing band Haunted Graffiti's tight musicianship provides the perfect foil for Pink's stream-of-consciousness sprawl. But while Mature Themes' conceptual glue makes it more cohesive than all of his previous work put together, glorious randomness abounds: not many artists would interrupt a song to order food at a drive-thru, as Pink does on the rhapsodic "Schnitzel Boogie," or write a song about being bros with a legendary seer, as he does on "Nostradamus and Me," one of his more ecstatically drifting pieces of chillwave. As always, Pink's lyrics are densely knotted with wordplay and innuendo; his fondness for sound effects approaches Spike Jones levels, and his fondness for dropping violent imagery into his songs makes them all the more jarring and surreal, as on "Is This the Best Spot," where G-spots and H-bombs go hand in hand. Yet all of this weirdness feels like it has more of a point on Mature Themes than it has on his previous albums: sex and love can be strange and complicated. "Pink Slime" takes on a whole new meaning in Pink's hands, and amidst its silliness, "Symphony of the Nymph" tackles gender roles and sexual stereotypes; despite the song's bragging, when Pink sings "I'm just a rock n' rolla from Beverly Hills!," there's more than a hint of strain in his voice. And even if a lot of the album's sexual imagery seems adolescent, Pink turns it on its head with the album's soft rock title track, which addresses the teenage ideal of a girl and boy in love (along with his wish to be taller). He goes deeper into that fantasy with the jingle-jangle single "Only in My Dreams," which is is sweetly creepy and full of bubblegum yearning like a vintage AM radio hit, and with the fantastic album closer "Baby," a cover of Donnie & Joe Emerson's 1979 song (and 21st century mixtape favorite) that features Dam-Funk helping Pink complete the smooth loverman persona. It's one of the few times where Mature Themes is actually sexy as well as sexual, and the way Pink disappears into the song may be his biggest mind-f*ck yet. Even his surprises end up being perfectly Ariel Pink things to do in retrospect, and with this album, he's mastered being more superficially accessible yet ultimately more cryptic. Mature Themes just reveals more levels with more listening; as Pink himself sings on the psych oddity "Early Birds of Babylon," "hey, how does he do that?" ~ Heather Phares

2010年の前作『Before Today』が絶賛され、知る人ぞ知るカルト・ヒーローからUSインディーの顔役となったアリエル・ピンクの新作(にして本名義ではラストと噂される一枚)。キラキラとしたシンセが美しいフォーク・ロックから、〈暗黒版のビーチ・ボーイズ〉なんて言いたい妖しいナンバーまで幅広い曲を収録。ドニー&ジョー・エマーソン"Baby"のカヴァーからは彼流のソウル・フィーリングも感じられる。アシッド・サイケなサウンドと普遍のポップ・メロディーの組み合わせという意味では、前作の踏襲と言えるものの、リスナーをビビらせたキテレツ感はかなり整理され、病み付きになるほど楽曲そのものの良さが際立ってきた。それでも変態っぽさはじんわり染み出てしまっているのだが……。
bounce (C)山口智男