1 Ariel Pink opens his set with Cass McCombs at Chicago's Empty Bottle on November 5.
Russell Woelfel
The ol’ two-in-one
Cass McCombs and Ariel Pink treat fans to a limited-edition super group performance in Chicago
By Katie Heath
Published: November 9th, 2007 | 3:00am
November 5, 2007, at Chicago’s Empty Bottle
— Except for one chatty guy who demanded that Ariel Pink “freak out,” the audience didn’t quite reach a level of anarchy after learning the two headlining acts had formed one super group, albeit the element of surprise did rattle the senses.
Ariel Pink (pronounced “r-real”) joined Cass McCombs for a two-week East Coast tour to promote McComb’s 2007 album, Dropping the Writ (Domino), before McCombs switches vans and finishes the tour as an opener for Jose Gonzalez. Pink and McCombs have been performing a sort of you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours act as they’ve announced they’ll be sharing musicians, songs, smokes, beds, towels, and a stage.
Is this a recipe for plain and simple deviancy? According to McCombs’ MySpace blog, he’s says no: “We've been rehearsing like mad so there will be absolutely zero monkey business.” At the Chicago show, the corps of six musicians found enough room for themselves onstage and a certain seriousness ensued as Pink cracked back to the heckler fan, “Not tonight, man.” However, despite Pink’s convincing demeanor, the innate nature of a psychedelic rock show is a mischievous one. Therefore, this factor might have led some to believe that the only thing missing from such an ensemble of guitars, bass, drums, maracas, tambourine, keyboards, and whistles was the techno-colored acid school bus that got them there in the first place.
Ariel Pink, an L.A. singer, composer, and producer with a knack for making alternative pop-rock sound like the static between radio stations of the ’60s and ’70s, performed his set with a campy, almost sing-a-long feel. As a vocalist, Pink is not exactly audible as most of his lyrics end in something that sounds like “zueeel.” Regardless of whether his vocals are intelligible, they’re usually melodic and catchy fun, reminiscent of the type of music one hears spilling out of moving car windows. With Pink on guitar and McCombs on a second, the group treated fans to a number of older songs from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti days which included the dreamy oddball “She’s My Girl,” “My Molly,” “Helen,” and “Envelopes Another Day,” the second to last song before Pink and McCombs traded driving seats.
“Lionkiller,” the first track off Dropping the Writ, seamlessly carried the same energy Pink had left us with, only this time sans the experimental, as the tune was a straightforward and infectious psyche-rock number. McCombs, usually an ambiguous persona, introduced himself for the first time that evening as he sang “I was born in a hospital,” a part deux, one might believe, to his 2003 release “I Went To a Hospital,” off the album A. Things cooled down, however, as they do awkwardly and abruptly after the first track on Dropping the Writ. McCombs then returned to his softer, melancholy indie-rock crooning, accompanied by an acoustic guitar or a Casiotone switched to xylophone for the occasion.Songs like “Petrified Forrest," also off Writ, are a classic example of the mixed reactions McCombs receives because his music is sweet but not entirely memorable — consider an indie rock goldfish with a seven second memory.
As McCombs’ vocals are comparatively more deadpan but no less falsetto than Ariel’s, it was as if the singing school bus had finally arrived at the campfire sing-a-long that the previous songs of the night had been alluding to. “That’s That,” the stand-out single off Writ and the last song of the evening, particularly encompassed this theory as McCombs sang about “cleaning toilets in a nightclub in Baltimore.” Despite its grim contents, the tune is uplifting and even joyous, clearly the track you play in the company of friends you rub elbows — or sticks — with. In the music of McCombs, the hodgepodge of styles and samples of the evening had finally coalesced into something resembling the accessible.
Even without an encore — the super group had been at it for nearly two hours — the performance was an ultimately satisfying one. Without having to part ways with one act or another too abruptly, the night’s unique blend of two bands-in-one might have turned its average concert-goers into spoiled ones.
Issue #23
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