Recap: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti at Triple Rock Social Club
As late as 10:30 p.m. on Friday night, rumors circulated outside of the still-locked doors of the Triple Rock Social Club that the night’s scheduled headliner, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, and any number of the opening bands were caught in snow on their way from Tennessee. (And whether or not the rumor was true, tourmates Duchess Says did drop out of the lineup for this show.) But eventually the doors opened, and ticket holders filed in to find out what kind of show L.A. outsider Pink and cohort put on.
Even after the crowd got inside, it was anyone’s guess whether there'd be any music. At about 11:30 p.m., a couple of dudes with water bottles seemed to take things into their own hands, getting up onstage and noodling around on the purple Korg keyboard. Two turned into five, and what were initially assumed to be a group of anonymous heroes taking over the night's music programming turned out to be Haunted House, the dual-drummer Minneapolis psychedelic-rock outfit. Singer and keyboard puncher Mike Watton's T-shirt read "ghost ride the whip," and that's exactly what Haunted House did on top of its massive rhythm section. Haunted House made effort seem effortless, generating a casual psychedelic beat of the kind German groups like Amon Düül and Can were going for in the '70s. Watton's vocals were delivered low in the mix, and he stood, legs together, with the posture of a man ordering a half-tuna sandwich with mustard at a deli counter. Each time the jam got stale, he kicked off a new keyboard progression that signaled his bandmates to launch new bottleneck-guitar riffage and ornate bass figures, all of which inexorably gave way to the monster sound of stereo drumming.
Despite Watton’s heroic pledge to "keep playing until Ariel Pink comes," at around 12:30 a.m., even Haunted House began wondering about the headliner, asking "is Ariel Pink here yet? No?"
A little after 1 a.m., fortune and St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers, finally smiled on the Triple Rock as Pink and band took the stage. Pink, sporting a Duran Duran sweater and a pair of futuristic space galoshes, thanked the audience for their patience: “We’re tired, you’re tired of waiting. We’re not gonna complain. Tonight’s a good night.”
Pink’s records are full of super-compressed mouth percussion and dreamlike, lo-fi sonic fingerpainting, and if you were wondering how that might translate onstage, the answer is: It doesn’t. Instead, he was backed by a full-spectrum rock band ripping through material from House Arrest ("Interesting Results," “Hardcore Pops Are Fun”) all the way back through 2004’s The Doldrums, and even a request (“She’s Gone”).
In the middle of the set, Pink decided to take it easy for a couple of songs and reclined next to his monitor, his uncut mop almost falling off the stage. Two apparently inebriated young women gave into temptation and passed their hands through it.
As it got near 2 a.m., holes began to rip in Pink’s positive attitude: “Vocals up in the monitors—it’s the only instrument I play so… turn up the reverb as loud as you can—it doesn’t matter how it sounds now…. I’m trying to not try as hard as I can!”
The Triple Rock’s website, following indie conventional wisdom about Pink’s live show, actually featured a disclaimer for this gig: “Audiences are generally hostile towards the unrehearsed nature of the live compositions.” But anyone that came looking for a train wreck went home disappointed—the Graffiti were tight and together. Pink’s whistling was precise, and his mic poses with PBR in hand were cocky. There is enough craft in Pink’s songs to make them good rock ’n’ roll tunes, but only once at this gig, in the falsetto pitch of The Doldrums’ “Among Dreams,” did his real weirdness come across.
