OK, so we weren’t massive fans of Ariel Pink’s Mature Themes.
The album – his second for 4AD – feels, at points, trite, excessively knowing or just plain careless; perhaps as if the big studio budgets and wider recognition have robbed Pink of the zeal that made his fuggy home recordings so attractive.
But ‘Only In My Dreams’ is a rare highlight, a moment when the retrolicious (Pink’s term) melancholy of his past work shines through. It’s now got a video, which you can watch below. It follows Pink, kicked out by an enraged lover, searching for intimacy wherever he can find it. And it’s recorded on fuzzy VHS, of course.