Video "Bright Lit Blue Skies" - Ariel Pink

Video "Bright Lit Blue Skies" - Ariel Pink

If you haven't checked out Ariel Pink's new album Before Today I definitely recommend doing so. Perhaps many people, like myself, formerly found the man's music too lo-fi, too saturated in tape fuzz. Or found his songwriting too...well...strange. If this was the case then don't worry! Before Today, while certainly still an Ariel Pink album, is infinitely more approachable than a lot of his previous offerings.

"Bright Lit Blue Skies" is the second track from the album and is a flurry of upbeat hooks and luscious harmonies. The song is a cover of cover the Rockin Ramrods' 1966 jam of the same name and makes perfect sense as the gateway to an album brimming with sunshiny 60's affectation. The video follows its frantic passion opening with images of a couple going-at-it in a field and waves crashing down. The unsteady manual camerawork adds to the chaos following dudes breaking in to an all girls school (by way of a cardboard trojan horse). They of course then have a fully clothed orgy, which is broken up by the troublesome campus police who is eventually out witted.

The album as a whole explores these adult themes in a consistently childish, which is not to say entirely giddy, way. Be it exuberance or melancholy, Before Today draws from such unbelievably disparate musical influences and takes such dramatic structural turns that these states of mind are invoked in a way somehow both familiar and yet unpredictable. Highly Recommended.

Ariel Pink - Bright Lit Blue Skies - Here Before

Ariel Pink - Round and Round - Here Before