Recap Ariel Pink at the Bluebird Theater

Last night, as his bandmates, The Haunted Graffitti, stood around waiting for their leader, Ariel Pink continued to hesitate, flitting between the backstage area and the little side room performers often use to get a sneak-peak of the Bluebird Theatre crowd. Back and forth, round and round...

Pink, enjoying a resurgence this year as the godfather of chillwave, suddenly shot out, sporting a bleach-cracked mop-top, a K-Mart-friendly, sleeveless, pink pants-suit and glue-on glitter drops on the side of each eye. The elvish man-child, obviously, has come a long way since his shy beginnings as a San Diego bedroom artist/Animal Collective signee. He wickedly sauces up his soprano moments like The Darkness used to, flashes devil horns, twirls (and plays with) his hair, and sorta flirts with himself as if Hollywood might be calling on a back-room phone.

Ultimately, however, Pink is an acquired taste(maker), and his show will never be for the faint of lo-fi. Luckily, a few of the tunes he plucked from recent critical darling Before Today have a skewed pop momentum to them. There was a noticeable cocaine bump-up in energy when the money riff from “Bright Lit Blue Sky” hit, not to mention the thick tom-tom opening of “L’estat,” the spooky disco overtones of “Fright Night (Nevermore),” and punky fan favorite “Round And Round.”  

Inhabiting a mini-Mike Patton role, Pink pumped the audience by playing crude air-bass, tinkling imaginary piano keys, and crashing a pretend cymbal or three. He’s also taken to transforming his love of random, home-recorded mouth sounds into an echo-driven concert gadget. In this way, Pink is more of a traditional frontman than ever, but he’s still getting the hang of between-song banter; he started off with a scathing, confrontational guise, “shushing” the crowd and calling out perceived “hipsters.” (“Are you too insecure to clap?” he asked at one point.) Realizing he was getting the crowd’s dander up unnecessarily, he shifted gears and let his guard down. Pink is polarizing, but he knows when to let the music speak for itself.