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"How’s the blend for you guys?"
Ariel Pink was sitting in *Station to Station'*s recording car, a guitar on his lap, a just-knocked-over beer bottle fizzing on the rug. It was the early afternoon, and the 35-year-old Los Angeles musician was listening to the members of his band, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, record some backing vocals for his 2010 hit, "Round and Round." For the next few minutes, the musicians stand in front of microphones and sing that song’s AM-gold hook: "Na na naaa naaa/na na naaa naaa"…
Pink has been with Station to Station since its debut in New York and is easy to spot among the other passengers, with his long, dirty-blonde hair and propensity for wandering smoke breaks ("Where’s Ariel going?" is a semi-familiar refrain). But when he's not recording or being nomadic he's on stage, where he and his bandmates — bassist Tim Koh, drummer Kenny Gilmore, guitarist Jorge Elbrecht, and keyboardist Joe Kennedy — play a kind of roly-poly pop-rock that’s frayed and studio-sleek.
But the current live show is vastly different than Pink’s early forays on the road, in the mid-‘00s, after a series of homemade recordings were discovered and released by Paw Tracks, the label overseen by psych-pop group Animal Collective. Early records like Worn Copy and The Doldrums were full of deeply catchy gems that were fuzzy, almost subterranean — they sounded as though they could have been recorded at any point in the last 30 years. Back then, he performed (and often recorded) largely by himself. That's changed. "I rarely do anything alone these days," he told WIRED.
Still, after Pittsburgh, he once again went solo: Though most of his band members departed Station to Station after the second stop, Pink said he will be hanging around through at least Kansas City, with plans to do some more recording on the train, and a few more live performances. This latest recording session – the one that just witnessed the spilled beer – was to nail backing vocals, so Pink can play sans band — "my karaoke kind of deal," he said.
Taking part in the Station to Station trip – solo or with his band – is "a vacation of sorts," said Pink, who first met organizer Doug Aitken when he performed at one of his events in 2006.
"It’s such a hare-brained scheme," Pink added. "If Doug pulls it off, it’s cool that I’ll have been a part of it."
All photos: Kendrick Brinson/WIRED
