Ariel Pink - Sit n' Spin (2021)

Sit n’ Spin is a special installment of Ariel Archives focusing on the singles, EPs, and unreleased sessions recorded by Ariel Pink in the late aughts after a five-year hiatus from making new music. Documenting his first recordings with a full band, Sit n’ Spin contains the best and rarest rumblings of the artist at the beginning of an explosive second chapter.

Around 2008, Ariel Pink had found a group of musicians that brought his self-recorded music to life in a live context. They were drummer Jimi Hey, keyboardist Kenny Keys, bass player Tim Koh, guitarist Cole M. Greif-Neil, and, later, multi-instrumentalist Jorge Elbrecht and drummer Aaron Sperske. Shows at the beginning of this new phase were thrilling affairs involving Pink originals “Thespian City”, “Envelopes Another Day,” “For Kate I Wait,” and a particularly climactic cover of The Dover’s “She’s Gone.” It was during this period that Pink’s new group (touring as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti) also started recording new music. These sessions would become the first recordings by the artist since crafting the underground pop opus Worn Copy in 2003.

Sit n’ Spin looks back to this transitional chapter, unfolding after Pink’s recording hiatus and leading up to the artist’s breakthrough album Before Today (4AD, 2010), his first full-length album recorded in a standard studio, which offered a sharp contrast to the home-recorded Haunted Graffiti releases of the early 2000s.