Will Schube has a 10 to 6, thank you very much.
Don’t call them the Sunday scaries. The only thing worse than nursing a throbbing headache and hand quivers from excessive Fireball shots and molly pops is referring to the symptoms with such a shitty use of alliteration. Every day is scary, it’s just that hangovers make you realize why that’s the case. On “Another Weekend,” Ariel Pink’s just-released single (and his first new solo music since 2014’s pom pom), the weekend gets examined with the question every bar patron asks the following morning: “Was it worth it?” The answer is no. Ariel Pink knows this and he’s here to impart some widsom.
Very few can express the moment to moment ups and downs of being alive better than Pink, and on “Another Weekend,” he wispily laments the physical and emotional toll the weekend holds as the 9-5 ceases for 48 hours and all energy is focused on forgetting what came before and the week lurking ahead. “Another weekend I can’t rewind/Another day not working for me,” he sings. Drink to forget until you realize how shitty not remembering really is. And then do it again. But Pink’s song is less about the result than the act of repetition, doing the same thing every weekend because that’s what you’re supposed to do. “Another Day” is a sober meditation on wasted time.
Musically, the track showcases Pink at his best as the lightweight verse beautifully and subtly shifts into a psychedelic half-time lilt, the synthesizers gently suffocating as Sunday night slides all too quickly into Monday morning. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this, as Ariel “Rockstar” Pink likely hasn’t had to delineate between weekday and weekend in a decade. But weekends are one of our strongest social constructs and the dread of a fresh five day cycle, doing exactly the same thing as the last is ingrained in us ad infinitum. No matter how big of a club you can sell out on Saturday night, you’ll be doing the same the next evening. And the one after that.
