Would it be fair to discount Ariel Pink’s past in favor of his present incarnation?
A presence once relegated to cassettes and then lumped into the swelling noise factory currently housing chillwavers, lo-fi poppers and garage rockers alike, Ariel Pink’s corporeal rock band, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, have reacted. “Before Today,” their first full-length for 4AD, is Pink’s cleanest effort, though it still maintains some semblance of distortion and grit. An inspired and oddly off-balance collection of the last thirty to thirty-five years’ worth of pop fragments, “Before Today” manages to come off as smooth and silken as anything Brian Eno touched in the late 70s, (the exception being his “No New York” compilation). If Steely Dan had frequented CBGB’s during ’77, I think they might’ve come up with an album like this.
While the album reboots some of Pink’s earlier recordings, “Before Today” also boasts an abundance of styles, pop related FM fodder from many sections of the record store, beautifully entwined into Pink’s own brand of approachable art pop. Covering the Rockin’ Ramrods’ 1966 single, Bright Lit Blue Skies, Pink establishes his willingness to invade popdom despite his indie roots and only stresses this further when the polite choruses, jolly synth pop affectations and sing-song back-ups of the “yeah yeah” variety come into play with L’estat (Acc. to the Widow’s Maid). The song’s joviality is interrupted once the band dare get inventive, transitioning into spacey progressions that pair Joe Zawinul with the Cocteau Twins.
They score amusement with the campy flare of Fright Night (Nevermore) before they softly lean on funk-laden R&B for Round And Round and Beverly Kills, the former narrative-like and noir-esque, the latter a Kool & The Gang bass jam.
About the halfway point, with the exception of the soft-stalgic and ornate Can’t Hear My Eyes, “Before Today” launches into fuzz-toned neo-psychedelia (Butt-House Blondies), rock melodies (Little Wig), and a moog-ish instrumental (Reminiscences). Menopause Man, (with little seriousness to its title), carries a “zero bullshit” flattened vocal that leads to an otherwise melodious hook, cycling bass lines and steady guitar notes collapsing into a mass of scrapes and chaos.
The album’s final song, Revolution’s A Lie, almost pays homage to Public Image Ltd’s Public Image, a throbbing bass line leading the song into a high-tempo, reverb-drenched treatise on its title, a fondness for New Wave’s heyday its actual declaration.
As Ariel Pink sounds off in stride, indie rock sacrifices nothing to gain some accessibility. Inasmuch as “Before Today” clearly relishes in everything wrong with pop music, Pink commits himself to the genre, (in its entire permutated splendor), and merely attempts to improve it. The results are fascinating.