For a lot of Ariel Pink fans, this is where it all began. Self-released in 2000 and reissued by Paw Tracks in 2004, The Doldrums is singular in Rosenberg’s catalogue for several reasons: it presented as a depressive break-up album; it found Rosenberg restraining his compositional fireworks without hog-tying them; and lyrically it was bashful in a way that pretty much every other Ariel Pink album issued (or relentlessly reissued) wouldn’t be, and even when it wasn’t so bashful (cf. “Among Dreams”) the fidelity was so poor that nobody could tell. These songs belong and fit together thematically. 

This was outsider pop on a handful of downers, and since the world outside clued-in hipsters and L.A. weirdoes didn’t know who Rosenberg was yet, it was easy to assume that The Doldrums represented a modified Reynols or Jandek scenario — some mystery caveman with a great ear for bygone pop, a yen for home-recording, and access to his parents’ vinyl stash. There’s so much to treasure here: the skiffle-shriek of “Haunted Graffiti,” loose-strung sing-along “Let’s Build a Campfire There,” the teary synth-pop yearning of “Until the Night Dies,” how “Good Kids Make Bad Grown Ups” asphyxiates a panic attack with a pity party. 

The mouth drumming was in full effect, the instrumentation flailed around in a loose but determined approximation of pro songwriting, everything sounded like a 20-generation dub of a 20-generation dub, and half the time Rosenberg seemed on the verge of tumbling down a well, literally and figuratively speaking; on no other album has the man sounded this totally lost and alone, or been able to draw a listener so fully into his headspace. Go listen to The Doldrums again, right now; it remains as alien and forlorn and unfathomable as it did way back in 2004.