Can’t Hear My Eyes

This song has been looping around in my head for the best part of a week now so I thought I’d try to exorcise it by  sharing it with y’all.  The track, I Can’t Hear My Eyes, is the latest from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – which is really more of a project than a band.

Pink, self-indulgent control freak or visionary musical genius, depending on who you talk to, was first thrust into the spotlight in 2003 when he gave a homemade CD-R to Animal Collective, which led to him becoming the first act to be signed to their newly-formed record label, Paw Tracks. Since then he has built a steady cult following, stopping short of receiving the critical acclaim that label-mates Animal Collective have garnered, due perhaps to his obscure production techniques. Pink records much of his material at home using simple recording equipment in order to achieve a sound as ‘un-produced’ as possible. His albums are littered with tape hiss and production blips that make them  sound like they were recorded on a mono cassette recorder in someone’s garage circa 1970. Influences can be picked out when listening to his music and patches of everyone from Hall and Oates and Roxy Music to Frank Zappa and  Talking Heads are sewn together to produce a sound that is decidedly un genre-specific (that’s what we like). Forced to describe it, you could say that his music is something of a new wave, 1980′s pop, lo-fi kind of muddle, but the afore-mentioned eccentric recording techniques give it a lovely gritty finish.

I love it anyway… let me know what you think.