After Today

On Ariel Pink's "With You Every Night"

On January 6th, 2021, a mob of right wing reactionaries stormed the U.S. Capitol hoping, somehow, to overturn the results of the 2020 election and reinstall Donald Trump as president of the United States, against the will of the American people. That their mission was doomed from the start did not matter. It was a prime opportunity to cause ruckus, to exact some degree of vengeance on a government that clearly loathed them, if it acknowledged them at all. Any potential consequences would be paid later.

And they were. Over the ensuing four years, the doddering Biden administration pursued two goals above all else: aiding and abetting genocide, and prosecuting the many sundry oafs who had participated in January 6th. The Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and various other arms of the federal government devoted considerable resources to identifying, trying, and imprisoning anyone deemed an “insurrectionist.” They had a message to send: actions had consequences.

Until they didn’t. Soon after his re-ascension to the presidency in January 2025, Donald Trump granted a universal pardon to anyone convicted of any crime related to the January 6th riots. This pardon extended even to those with records of other criminal offenses, including child abuse, domestic violence, and rape. He too had a message to send: for some, actions did not have consequences. These patriots were free to resume the lives they had left behind on January 5th.

Ariel Pink is hoping to do the same. Last week, he released With You Every Night, his first proper LP since his participation in the January 6th rally (though not the riot). Since then, Pink has become a pariah in the indie rock world. He was dropped by his label, his music was delisted from streaming platforms, and his tours were canceled. Friends and collaborators distanced themselves, disavowed any and all relationships. Actions, for Pink, continued to have consequences.

Faced with this reality, Pink financed the recording and release of With You Every Night entirely on his own. Surely, the album will not win him many new fans. Most of the songs here work in the same register as 2012’s Mature Themes: bright, corny synthesizers; absurdo-schlock lyrics; melodies straight out of public access television credit sequences. These are not the preferred tones and textures of the MAGA set, many of whom would presumably call this music “gay,” if they ever hear it at all (they won’t).

At the same time, it’s unlikely this album will win him back any old fans—not because of the music itself, but because of everything else. Over the past several years, Pink has refashioned himself into an anti-cancel culture crusader, a cautionary tale of the limits of free speech and the soft power wielded by liberal tastemakers. In interviews with journalistic luminaries such as Tucker Carlson, Roseanne Barr, and Adam Friedland, Pink has railed against the supposed conformity of those in the music world, and the unjust treatment he has received due to his heterodox beliefs. This campaign has only alienated him further from former listeners.

With You Every Night, then, seems to be a record made for no one. This tension is what makes it an inherently interesting object, one worth engaging with in good faith. Say what you will about Pink’s behavior and beliefs, but this clearly isn’t an attempt to cash in on his status as a MAGA cause célèbre. It’s music made for himself, music he couldn’t help but make—a genuine, sincere artistic effort.

It’s also, frankly, pretty good. With its symphony of synthesizers and tinny drum machine beat, “Pocket Full of Promises” opens the album with a flashback to “Kinski Assassin,” the bonkers banger that kicks off Mature Themes. Lines about Qanon and “out of whack” politics (“You fell for that / That’s what we both love about me”) might come off as cringe had Pink not already established a reputation as poet laureate of the dumpster. Many of his best songs are made up of literal garbage language—words that mostly aren’t even meant to be heard, much less mean anything. In this context, these asides work perfectly fine, sudden ejaculations discarded just as fast as they arrive.

The stronger moments here find Pink playing pastiche and delivering his schizo gabble in equal measure. “Mommy Made Dinner,” a goth ditty that could pass for Seventeen Seconds-era Cure, fixates on the juxtaposition of “hunk[s] of meat” and “soggy doggy treats.” The Byrds-biting “House of the Haunted Hebrews” (great title) is built around a jangling, McGuinn-ian guitar, while “Doggie In The Window” rides a mondo organ styled after Ray Manzarek’s sound on an early Doors record. Musically speaking, these songs are uniformly excellent; Pink is as much of a student of rock history as ever. The extent to which you’ll find them enjoyable depends on how charming you find his schtick at this point. I’ll confess: I still do.

At times, the album approaches the rarified air of the Haunted Graffiti era. “Nightbirds” is a perfect track two, a sugar-sweet boogie that ranks right up there with “Among Dreams” and “Every Night I Die at Miyagi’s.” Lead single “Everyone’s Wrong” is even better. Over a gauzy, maudlin melody swiped from “The Girl From Ipanema,” Pink stews on the mistakes he’s made: “Times like these I get depressed and I feel so sad / I think that I’m fucking wrong.” He isn’t the only one at fault, however: “If I’m wrong it’s for the best and I feel so sad / ‘Cuz everyone’s fucking wrong.” It’s raw, tender, real—a rare moment of honesty from the Clown Prince of Indie Pop.

Musically, the song picks up where Pink left off with “Another Weekend,” the divine, downer pinnacle of his last proper LP, 2017’s Dedicated To Bobby Jameson. That record, released in the first year of Trump 1.0, was underappreciated, dismissed as an overripe relic of a scene that had crested sometime around the 2010 midterms, the red wave that swept dozens of foaming, feral madmen out of lawnmower dealerships, rifle ranges, and VA hospital PTSD wards into the halls of power. With You Every Night arrives in the first year of Trump 2.0. It is, to say the least, a different world, one of drudgery, and despair, and constant catastrophe. Each day brings some awful new assault on a pillar of our society, from Gestapo immigration enforcement, to the rollback of life-saving vaccine mandates, to the complete abrogation of the right to speak freely. After just eight months, it’s already clear that is the most horrific administration of my lifetime (up until today, at least).

It’s also the most effective. Within all the mendacity and malignancy is the slightest silver lining: a vision of a muscular (some might say “authoritarian”) executive branch that has the capacity to bend reality to its will. The second Trump regime is an utter repudiation of the last several generations of Democratic governance, from the smug triangulation of Clinton, to the meek incrementalism of Obama, to the Weekend at Bernie’s fever dream of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. These administrations were adamant that the world had been made and there was no remaking it—that the most they could do was manage decline by baling water out of the sinking ship of state.

Even at the time, this was a questionable vision. Trump 2 has proven it decisively false. Reality is fungible, even flexible. It can be broken. This administration is well aware of that fact, and it has committed to applying its considerable strength towards the cruelest of intentions. Whenever this is all over—and it will eventually be over, one way or another—we must ensure these hard-earned lessons are not forgotten. The world is what we make of it. We have the capacity to impose our values upon it. After three more years (or seven? eleven?) of this shit, it will not only be our right to do so, it will be an imperative. Liberals might be loathe to admit this reality, but it does not make it any less true.

In the meantime, Pink and his fellow patriots are, presumably, pleased as punch. They may have lost the battle, but they won the war, and we are all worse off for it, Pink very much included. In the indie rock sphere, With You Every Night is effectively invisible. Most songs on the album have topped out around 30,000 streams on Spotify, a fraction of a fraction of the numbers Pink once did. Legacy music media seems to have enacted a sort of omertà as it regards the album: no news hits, no press releases—no hint that it exists, much less is pretty good. No one has even bothered to pan him: per aggregator Album of The Year, the album has received precisely zero formal reviews. It simply isn’t worth it. There’s no juice to squeeze from this lemon.

It’s a shame. After the waking nightmare of the last half-decade, the cancellation of Ariel Pink for the relatively benign crime of attending January 6th feels more absurd than ever. It’s worth noting that Pink’s pal John Maus faced hardly any blowback for his attendance, a fact that Pink harped on in a recent Substack missive (Maus, of course, was smart enough not to try the martyr routine on Fox News). In a world of such extraordinary crises, who has the emotional bandwidth to invest themselves in the personal politics of one weird little dude? Certainly not me.

But I am not the world. Many people believed, and evidently still do, that Pink’s actions were beyond the pale—that they fully invalidated any and all merit he ever held as an artist. As much as I might disagree with this belief, I cannot deny that thousands upon thousands of people maintain it, especially those who make made up the bulk of Pink’s audience: former Pitchfork obsessives who have aged into milquetoast listeners of The Daily. If I’m aware of this fact, Pink should have been too.

Ours would be a better world if such attitudes did not prevail, if the strange and objectionable beliefs of great artists could be forgiven, if not forgotten. Then again, it would be an even greater world if the cruelty, xenophobia, and nihilism that drive the MAGA movement did not exist. Wishing it away will get us nowhere. As distasteful as it may be, learning to live with it—all of it—is the only thing we can do. Pink must do the same. With With You Every Night, a record doomed to be ignored by all but the Haunted Graffiti Mujahideen, it appears he has.

Ariel Pink stood up for the awful things he believes. His audience stood up for their beliefs as well, and now both are worse off. Those who choose not to listen to the new album will be missing out on a worthy follow up to Mature Themes, Pom Pom, and Bobby Jameson. It’s their loss, certainly, though not a particularly tragic one. Plenty of great records have dropped this year, with more on the way. Spotify queues will continue to fill up just fine.

For Pink, the loss is much greater. He may have won himself a few new admirers in the Tucker Carlson audience, but it’s unlikely that they’ll be smashing play on “I Wanna Be a Girl” (great song). Those who would are long gone—not so much offended at this point as unbothered, utterly disinterested, the Dons Draper to Pink’s Ginsberg.

There is no clemency in the court of public opinion, no presidential pardon forthcoming that might unwind mistakes made. For Ariel Pink, there is no Before Today. There is only tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

“With You Every Night” is available now

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