Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti - Before Today

Review by Nick Neyland

Before Today burns brightest in the beautifully nostalgic pang of ‘Round and Round’. It’s such a multifarious and densely layered track that it could be dissected over a ream of pages, but here are a few highlights: the ghostly hush of the first verse, which perfectly mimics the atmosphere of Godley and Crème’s ‘Cry’; the pinging back and forth between Pink’s heliumised falsetto and his lower range in the first third of the song; that phone ring giving way to one of the most wonderfully awkward bridges between verse and chorus that you’ll ever hear; and the bittersweet drenched-in-pathos sing-along that the song descends into, which positions it as one of the most perfect summer songs of recent times. It won’t please the lo-fi purists, but ‘Round and Round’ gnarled by recorder grot just wouldn’t work—this is a song that really needed to scorch out of the orange Los Angeles perma-haze.»