Bright Lit Blue Skies – Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti Bright Lit Blue Skies – Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti (Buy)

Ariel Pink is known for his zany, lo-fi ways. To many of us, it’s the reason we keep going back to him time and time again. The texture which most of his work is lathered in can, at times, make you feel as if you’re listening to something from a completely different era. But it works, for him at least. The spontaneous bursts of noise and eccentricity that run rampant through most of his albums keep some unable to ‘understand’ Ariel Pink.

He’s seen as a guy from LA who’s very into his self-created scene of dismembering long-dead pop songs and reassembling them in an almost Frankenstonian way for the past decade.  The irony in his pop lies in the fact that while one might think he’s strictly hipster-friendly, a complete lunatic and just awful to listen to, really, he is among of the most innovative artists on the scene right now. Ariel Pink is by all means unconventional; primarily in the sense that all of his music has been home recorded, all 500+ of his songs. The DIY method that many bands are applying to producing, recording and distributing their music is becoming the same model that’s catapulting some acts to the top; Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti being a prime example.

While we are used to the lo-fi, raw quality Ariel pumps out, his most recent production, Before Today, finally sees him step from the comfort of his home recording sessions to an actual studio; however, it still is a fairly simple sounding LP. The album still retains that familiar Ariel Pink sound but, along with his Haunted Graffiti ensemble, it manages to sound more like an album and less like a collage. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the collages but with Before Today we get to witness the ‘progression’, so to speak, of an artist.

Growing up consuming discarded pop from the 70s and 80s, Ariel has a repertoire that is vast and seemingly never-ending and it obviously shows. In Before Today, we are offered all sorts of fun, literally, from the 70’s vibe-y opener Hot Body Rub to the irresistible pop-jam number that is Round and Round all the way to the harmony driven track that is L’estat (acc. to the Widow’s Maid).

Undoubtedly, no album this year has been hyped as much as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti’s Before Today, fortunately, the album lives up to the hype, and then some. The album is layered in influences that allow fans that are into Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era or Steely Dan or even Roxy Music to appreciate it. Before Today is a completely refreshing album that, if given the chance, can have it’s listeners proclaiming Glam is in no way dead – only suffering from a slight coma – and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti is the defibrillator that will force it out of it. Granted, the zany-ness is still there as is the reminiscence of a lo-fi quality, however, by my account, the album gets 8.2 bees.