Recap Os Mutantes and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti at the Cedar

This late in the game, “psychedelic” means just about everything and just about nothing, and offers as vague a way to describe music as “rock” does. But Saturday night at the Cedar Cultural Center, two very different bands committed themselves to the sensory overload that psychedelic music initially promised. Beloved by indie kids and The Flaming Lips, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti specializes in a tuneful yet disorienting mix and match of genres. Brazilians Os Mutantes are veterans of Tropicália, the politicized pop movement of the ’60s, and they unfurl a more elegant, stylistic clamor.

Ariel Pink has figured out how to craft a rambling composition for an audience of short attention spans: Cram enough enticing scraps of rhythm and melody into each song, so if someone doesn’t dig the Ethiopiques vamp right now, they only have to hang in a few seconds till the classic rock chorus kicks. With his shaggy blonde hair and distracted stage presence—not to mention his repeated firing of a toy laser gun—Pink sought to make the performance feel more ramshackle than a closer listen revealed it to be. But beneath the delay effects and gratuitous complications, there’s a savvy pop sense about which the band seems almost apologetic.

By contrast, Os Mutantes strive to hide all the stitches and cuts in their music. It was after 1 a.m. when they took the stage, clad in the sort of ornate cloaks and capes that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band might have worn in the 12th century. Led by gracious founding member Sérgio Dias, the revamped Mutantes hauled out old cuts, like “A Minha Menina,” as well as material from their 2009 comeback, Haih ... Or Amortecedor. Less than an hour later, they closed with an extended jam on the fittingly titled “Ando Meio Desligado” (“I Feel A Little Spaced Out”), which (old trick of theirs) seamlessly integrated the guitar solo from “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”