Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti/ Um @ The Portland Arms, Cambridge
(15th June 2005)

In our review of his single for Strange Lights, I said that people in the know know Um but I'd never met him. Turns out that's not quite the case. More years ago than either of us care to remember a shy and gangly Jimmy interviewed a shy and gangly pre-Um. He was in Hugo's Mixed Fruit Jam. I was writing Jimmy's Riddle. (Names have not been changed.) We exchanged this information and looks of incredulity during the gap in the middle of Ariel Pink's set when the sound bloke searched for, eventually located and then flicked on the bullshit filter.

But that was later.

Um resembles Clint Poppie circa Box Frenzy. All in black, drainpipe jeans and converse pumps, a mess of black hair and a heavy and be-badged black hat that only a pop star (wannabee) could or would wear in a sweatbox like the Portland. Like the Poppies at that time, the bulk of Um's performance comes off tape and it's personality that fills the stage: "The bloke who wrote half the music for that track.. um.. is in Germany now.. um.. I was going to announce his death, but it probably wouldn't have been very funny. Ha Ha!" And "Have you noticed that I have to say thanks before you clap?"

Unlike the Poppies, Um does not project manic alcohol energy on the stage. He's droll where they were dribbling and laconic where they were lashed. Hands in pockets, he delivers with relish the idea that he's going to buy Cambridge one day as a bag of spanners falls down a cliff ("Thank you." Applause) or angles himself away from the audience at the waist to better reproduce early Pink Floyd eccentricity ("Thank you." Applause.) His songs are sketches of songs, pop structure eschewed but always with a heart of groove and a solid core buried beneath the sonic obfuscation. The people in the know are here and now I know why.

Back when I started listening to the Poppies, I used to have a white jumper and a floppy fringe. I thought I was the coolest dood this side of the Wolverhampton Road. Eyes outside of my head would've seen that I needed to take the Daz challenge to remove the traces of last night's tea, and the night before's and the night before that's from it. Ariel Pink's band all have floppy fringes, but only he has the white jumper and somehow, on the Transit van gruelathon that is touring, he's managed to keep it absolutely pristine. Even the cuffs. He is the coolest dood this side of the Wolvo. Or he would be if only he'd turn the echo off his mic now and again. As the set lurches from one lengthy and self-indulgent overplayed epic to another, as I'm thinking Sisters of Mercy meets The Cardiacs on some kind of downers, the sound of him requesting "more o ror or or in or in in in in the in the the monitor the monitor or or or" is what's keeping me here.

Halfway through the set he calls the chap running the desk up onto the stage: "What is it?" "I I I I don't on't I on't know on't oh oh oh oh oh". He fiddles, I introduce myself to Um, I goggle at who he used to be, that bullshit filter is activated, he scuttles back to his dark corner. Miraculously the band instantly tighten up and fly right. A sense of purpose and an iron backbone are produced from somewhere and inserted. The wayward drifting is replaced by 20-20 directness as they hitch themselves to a new and unifying electronic throb for the ride home. Still awkward and weird and not normal and buried in echo but now free of bullshit, free of the Sisters gloom, and just about the best thing on stage tonight ite ite ite.