On The Download: Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – ‘Before Today’

“Before Today,” with its ‘70s and ‘80s influence on its sleeves, may be an album about looking to the past, but Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti’s biggest release yet has been a long time coming.

The band, the project of titular frontman Ariel Rosenberg, has been making mind-melting, speaker-blowing music for years, releasing 2004’s “The Doldrums” via like-minded experimentalists Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label along with a number of other hard-to-track-down discs over the last decade.

While Pink’s almost secretive release schedule and fuzzy, home-recorded sound has kept the band well off of the radar, it’s proven influential to retro-leaning buzz bands of recent years ranging from Girls to Memory Tapes.

“I know I’ve left my mark already,” the singer told the Los Angeles Times recently. “I know when somebody’s heard my music. I can hear it in their music.”

With “Before Today,” though, he’s bringing that mark to the masses. The album was his first to crack the Billboard 200 and – with a relatively high-profile release courtesy of new label 4AD Records to go with the band’s first stint in a studio – has notched breathless reviews from Pitchfork to the New York Times.

For the most part, it deserves them. “Before Today” is a druggy romp that plays like a sincere but surreal through-the-looking-glass take on Hall and Oates on songs such as highlights “Round and Round” and “Can’t Hear My Eyes,” while “Little Wig” turns up the fuzz Blue Oyster Cult style. “Fright Night (Nevermore)” nods toward “Thriller”-era Michael Jackson in both spooky tone and slinky bass playing.

While Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti likely remains too intentionally offbeat for most, “Before Today” finds the group finally ready for its close-up – or at least as close as Pink and his pals will ever be.

The band’s North American summer tour kicks off this Friday at the Echoplex in LA. CLICK HERE for the full list of dates.