Before Today

Ariel Pink rose to indie prominence with a wry, murky take on \'70s AM radio pop—like a beach party imagined by someone who had never left the house. Fleshed out by a full band and more conventional production, *Before Today* was the moment Pink peeked out from the underground—a cleaner but no less fascinating version of the perverted pop he’d been making on his own for years. At the album’s heart is “Round and Round,” whose melancholic, “Billie Jean”-style strut breaks through the clouds and into an after-school sing-along.

After a decade of home recorded releases on smaller labels, Ariel Pink jumps to 4AD and makes the best record of his career.

Throughout the late ’00s, SoCal DIY popster Ariel Rosenberg (a.k.a. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti) released a slew of cruddy-sounding home recordings that featured fragments of dreamy soft-rock buried in dull echo and tape hiss. Now, Rosenberg has spent time in a real studio with a real band, and while the resulting…

A notoriously rudimentary, inchoate home recorder, Ariel Pink has crafted some great pop songs over the course of a litany of obscure album releases.

Mostly, Ariel Rosenberg effectively exploits his new environs to create a sense of comfort.

LA's leftfield/lo-fi talent Ariel Pink turns to full-band material, still swathed in fuzz but managing more than a few moments of pop perfection, writes <strong>Michael Cragg</strong>