Before Today is my first introduction to Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, after months and months looking at the album and reading a few reviews and listening to the short samples here on Amazon, I decided to buy the album for 5 dollars. It is endlessly replayable. Technically, that's far from the truth: he has more than a few collections of songs under his belt, but many of those albums, such as House Arrest, Lover Boy, and Scared Famous, came from a creative burst Pink had in the early 2000s and were issued and reissued years later. Now signed to 4AD, Ariel Pink s Haunted Graffiti release Before Today on June 8, 2010. 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 … Ariel Pink (born Ariel Marcus Rosenberg on June 24, 1978) is a musician who is … Before Today is the eighth studio album by American recording artist 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. So a certain amount of mystery was part of the package, and the recordings weren't giving anything away. 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.
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. 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.After a decade of home recorded releases on smaller labels, Ariel Pink jumps to 4AD and makes the best record of his career.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)". "Round and Round" was mastered at Abbey Road, and not a cent of that cost was wasted. With roots going back as far as 1996, the West Coast act are as sublime as they are surreal with a sound loaded with hazy nostalgia and a fiercely experimental pop palette. Ariel Pink calls Before Today his first album.