Most people who follow Ariel Pink were introduced to him by 2004's The Doldrums, the first non-Animal Collective release on that band's Paw Tracks label. From the beginning, Pink was presented as an outsider, a recluse who obsessively recorded at home and had compiled hundreds of unheard songs. The notion that he was a supremely strange person making music in his own world was fully supported by the string of albums, singles, and EPs that followed. First, there was the music itself, which saw Pink using an ultra lo-fo recording set-up to re-imagine cheesy AM radio jingles and lost new wave tracks as surreal, art-damaged pop. His music could be bizarre and disturbing, with warped voices and dark subject manner evoking loneliness, bad drugs, and alienation; it could also be sweet and even sincere, celebrating the pleasure of a well-rendered verse melody and a good chorus.
Then there was the fact that the recordings themselves had apparently been excavated from a cache of material from another time: The vast majority of the music he's released since 2004 was written and recorded years earlier, mostly between 1998 and 2002. So a certain amount of mystery was part of the package, and the recordings weren't giving anything away. His releases never struck me as possessing the level of genius his most ardent supporters hear in them, but that was OK, because he didn't seem like he was setting out to make masterpieces.
Something unusual has happened to Ariel Pink since he first started sharing those tapes with the wider world, though. Think of it like the cliché about The Velvet Underground & Nico, but on a smaller, more craft-y scale: His records didn't reach a lot of people, but many of those who heard them were inspired to start home recording projects of their own. So as different kinds of lo-fi music bubbled up from the indie underground in the last couple of years-- from more placid chillwave to roughed-up garage rock to abstract instrumental music-- and many of these bands were talking about his influence, all of a sudden Ariel Pink started looking way ahead of the game. And now, he's been given a chance to do something few artists working on his scale ever do: record an album more or less professionally for a large independent label and enjoy all the increased attention such a leap provides. He did not waste the opportunity.
Oddly, the difference in fidelity isn't what sets this record apart from earlier Ariel Pink releases. While much of the tape hiss that marked those records is gone, along with the degraded audio quality that came off those old, decaying cassettes, this is still a pretty modest-sounding LP, recorded simply and cleanly but not, from the sound of it, expensively. Haunted Graffiti, which began as an abstract concept, has also turned into a full band featuring experienced members who've spent years playing in established independent acts, and each took care to get their various parts right. The vocal harmonies overlap just so, the guitar fills are in the right places, the drumming is tight and precise, and bassist Tim Koh in particular colors the songs with striking rhythmic and countermelodic depth. It turns out that these details make a big difference, even while the album adheres to the hazy overriding aesthetic of Pink's earlier records. The fact that this is, in a sense, Ariel Pink's first group of songs created to be released together and presented as a whole-- as an album, rather than as a collection of songs recorded years ago-- sets the table for a new focus.
We know from interviews that Ariel Pink grew up absorbing throwaway pop from the 70s and 80s, finding a way to make it all fit into his cracked worldview. Something overlooked about those songs, though, is that the people writing them were pros who knew something about intros, codas, and middle-eights, how a certain kind of chord change can cause the turnaround to the chorus to hit a little harder. Ariel Pink's best songs are surprising, and there's a real sense of musical delight on Before Today; the sections sound logical but never predictable, and there are wild bridges and short bits that emerge seemingly randomly but wind up taking the song somewhere unexpected. So "L'estat (Acc. to the Widow's Maid)" goes from a rollicking organ-led opening section to a catchy call-and-response chorus hook the Monkees might have liked to a short double-time instrumental section to a jubilant coda, and all the while the stitches never show. Songs like "Little Wig" have so many interesting interlocking parts that they can almost feel proggy, despite their relative brevity and tight pop structures.
Since a number of these songs exist in earlier versions on other records, it's easy to hear how they benefit from Before Today's more worked-over approach. "Beverly Kills" was a fine song in its original incarnation on the 2002 edition of Scared Famous (it also appeared on last year's Grandes Exitos comp), but it has so much more power here. Opening with roller-rink keyboards, a popping bass, and car chase sound effects, it feels loose and casual until the falsetto vocals snap into place, sounding suddenly like Philip Bailey on a lost Earth, Wind & Fire jam. The delicate soft rock of "Can't Hear My Eyes", also heard twice before in slightly cruder forms, benefits greatly from just a few more dabs of production mousse. It's a song that wants to be slick, bringing to mind carefully layered singles by Alan Parsons Project, complete with swells of synthetic strings and a smooth sax interlude.
And then there's "Round and Round", one of indiedom's most unifying and memorable songs in 2010, which is barely recognizable from its early four-track incarnation as "Frontman/Hold On (I'm Calling)". It's another song of smartly integrated units of melody, any one of which might be built out into a great song of its own, but which together become something astonishing. Its circular bassline doubles with low-chanted voices that build up tension and mystery, a connecting section that opens the song up with a high-pitched plea, and an interlude section with a ringing phone and some jazzy keyboards, all of which build to the massive sing-along chorus. "Round and Round" was mastered at Abbey Road, and not a cent of that cost was wasted. It is endlessly replayable.
Alongside these grabbier tunes are tracks that retain the uncanny, otherworldly sense that has been a constant thread through Ariel Pink's music. Best among these is "Menopause Man," which goes from grim deadpan verses to a fascinatingly beautiful chorus that sounds beamed in from another era, yet remains elusive and difficult to place. But even given the varied style and tone on Before Today-- there's a queasy instrumental and a faithful cover of the 60s garage rock song "Bright Lit Blue Skies"-- it feels of a piece and uniformly strong, and there's so much going on that it only seems to improve the more you listen to it.
It's a rare feat for artists to maintain a truly unique sound while taking their music in a direction that appeals to a wider audience. For those who've been following along for a few years, this is a groundbreaking record that condenses and amplifies Ariel Pink's most accessible tendencies. But the brilliant thing about Before Today is that no prior knowledge of his catalog is required. Newcomers can dig into this record and absorb all of these weird and wonderful songs now, and save the backstory for another day.
