Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

Ariel Pink’s lo-fi creations are so strange, beautiful, and addictive, it’s not hard to imagine the mad professor cooking this stuff up in a laboratory populated by the ghosts of pop’s past, a couple of little people, and an extremely baked Bob Pollard. Actually, the man behind the curtain is 32-year-old Angeleno Ariel Rosenberg, who has written a mind-boggling number of songs since getting his start at the tender age of 8. Pink’s work was just fucked-up enough to grab the attention of Animal Collective, which has released some of his best-known material on its Paw Tracks imprint. Last year’s Before Today sheds some of the crackle and hiss of his early recordings, but the songs are no less weird, with Pink singing about catching a disease from a hot tub in the opening track.

Updated 05/18/2011