Tiny Toy Poodle

Ariel Pink at Irving Plaza

Unfortunately, I missed the opening act, Silk Flowers, because I was too busy serving rich mothers with toy poodles their dry soy cappuccinos on the Upper West Side (yeah, it’s exactly as annoying as it sounds).

When I arrived, cult legend, Ariel Pink mentor and coolest-old-guy-ever R. Stevie Moore was just beginning his set.  Clad in red pajamas and a bathrobe, the heavily bearded and thickly bespectacled Moore thrashed around and played with the energy and enthusiasm of someone a third of his age and, though he spent a good deal of time squinting at a music stand in front of him (which, to be fair, is probably due to his absurdly large body of work), he delivered a set that laid a perfect foundation for Pink’s performance.  Moore took some choice selections from his huge catalog of songs, and brought out such classics as “Conflict of Interest”, famously performed on the Uncle Floyd show decades ago, and “I Like to Stay Home” which, judging by Moore’s outfit, still held true after all these years.

For all the flak that he’s received in the past, non-Coachella-meltdown Ariel Pink is surprisingly tight on stage.  Perhaps due to the addition of Haunted Graffiti, Pink managed to successfully translate his spaced-out, charmingly sloppy home recorded style into a precise and well executed live performance, and the band was even able to stray from the beaten path with some improvisation and extended jams that enlivened the performance even further.  While most of the songs catered to Pink’s more recently acquired fan base (following the critical success of Before Today and more widespread exposure that came from its reception), he nonetheless stayed true to the style that first garnered him his undeniable cult status and offered up a veritable smorgasbord of weird tunes and a stage presence that walked the thin line between genuinely bizarre and self-awareness.  Highlights from the set included an epic rendition of “Round and Round”, Before Today ’s more popular single, full of soulful “na-na-na’s” and an intensely back-lit light show that gave Pink’s tiny, shrimpy frame a nearly Christ-like silhouette up front, and a fast, poppy version of “Fright Night” that provoked ecstatic dancing from the crowd and saw an obviously altered-consciousness Pink hopping about the stage madly and whipping his long mane around like some sort of rowdy glam-rock lion cub.  In the end, Pink’s performance avoided the pitfalls that earned him bad reviews in the past, and manages to surprise everyone with an on-point set that took off in unexpected directions.