Album Review: Ariel Pinks Haunted Graffiti - Mature Themes

Mature Themes, the new album from Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, brings to mind Moe Szyslak's definition of post-modern: “weird for the sake of weird”. Far stranger than rabbits hanging in harnesses, the album opens with Kinski Assassin and its repeated chorus, 'Who sunk my battleship? I sunk my battleship” (the phrase “bring on the bogan shemales hopped up on meth” also hinting at Aussie origins), and things don't get any less bizarre from here.

Strange music and even stranger motifs abound, Is This The Best Spot repeatedly begging listeners to “step into my time warp”, before the title track and lead single Only In My Dreams drop in relatively traditionally-structured songs which sound magical amidst the madness (in the best Ween tradition), until Driftwood conjures the “bad breath of a cross-eyed goat” and things get mental again. The quizzically spiritual Early Birds Of Babylon leads into the patently pointless Schnitzel Boogie, which exists in complete contradiction to the album's title. Symphony Of The Nymph finds Pink eulogising himself a la Rivers Cuomo, while Farewell American Primitive is all drug-addled polemic, as fun as it is confounding.

They jump through dozens of eclectic ideas, both sonic and conceptual, a cacophonous melange at times as alienating as it is interesting. As with previous effort Before Today (2010), Pink has embraced the studio and the resulting sheen sounds fantastic – miles removed from his early lo-fi bedroom recordings – and it just acts to magnify the oddity of his muse. There's method to Pink's madness though, and there's enough going on in the margins to keep you coming back. A wilfully weird world, but a wonderful one to visit.