Ariel Pink – pom pom

This double album magnum opus from the one-time king of lo-fi haunted graffiti is essentially an Ariel Pink best-of, albeit with an entirely new batch of songs. And the whole affair is as tremendously enjoyable as you might expect from an album with song titles such as Nude Beach A G-Go, Exile on Frog Street and Goth Bomb.

Ariel Pink manages to be both highly reverent and irreverent towards his 70s and 80s FM radio touchstones, straddling the line between outright pastiche and retro-futurist mystique, crashing together in a Technicolor alchemy of pervy pop brilliance. Pom pom is a minefield of hooks and delightful detours, awash in an admittedly modest but thoroughly effective production; these songs are aiming for an ultra slick sheen but don’t need them. It’s this sense of the uncanny that elevates Ariel Pink into a different league and pom pom is teeming with the eerie echoes of musical ghosts past and future. Crucially, the album is also jubilant, exuberant and a hell of a lot of fun. [Colm McAuliffe]