Album Premiere: 'Before Today' by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Here are a few historic firsts for you. Next Tuesday, L.A.-based musician Ariel Pink and his band Haunted Graffiti will issue a new album, "Before Today," which he calls his first record (despite much evidence to the contrary). The release is their first for the 4AD label after a decade spent releasing obscure CDs, records and cassettes on countless bedroom labels (including Animal Collective's Paw Tracks imprint).
Pink's forthcoming album also constitutes another historical marker: for the first time, The Times will be offering an exclusive stream of a full-length album in advance of its official release. For the next week, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti's "Before Today" will be playable in its entirety in the embed below, as well as on our music home page.
Don't know Pink? Writer Simon Reynolds, author of the tome, "Rip It Up and Start Again: Post-Punk 1978-1984" and "Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture," among others, has penned a profile of Pink that will be published in next Sunday's L.A. Times.
In the piece, Reynolds captures one of the central tensions inside the sound of "Before Today":
What's odd about Ariel Pink is that the lo-fi, mumbly-vocal DIY tradition that his early music belonged to was originally vehemently opposed to the slick, big-budget AOR and '80s rock 'n soul that he's so inspired by. Hall & Oates are a perennial touchstone, while on "Before Today" you can hear Blue Oyster Cult circa "Don't Fear the Reaper" in "Butt-House Blondies" and the Police circa "Every Breath You Take" in "Round and Round".
More often, though, the echoes are less specific, his music like a puree of jumbled-up eras. Born in 1978, Pink belongs to the post-historical generation, shaped by the endless shuffle-mode of VH1 and classic rock radio, and, more recently, iPod and YouTube. "We have no concept of time," he says, talking of how some people in his generation "who like Sixties music, they live there forever."
