Kevin Bronson on September 12th, 2014

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If you start hearing music geeks talk about Ariel Pink’s forthcoming album in Eggers-like phrases – y’know, “a mind-blowing work of staggering genius” and variations like that – don’t dismiss that chatter as hyperbole. On “Pom Pom,” due Nov. 18 via 4AD, the 36-year-old eccentric has dropped “Haunted Graffiti” from his band name and dropped his gloves to do battle with the sounds of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. The latter is no surprise; Pink’s sonic crate-digging made for erratic but entertaining time travel on 2010’s “Before Today” and 2012’s “Mature Themes.” The first impression of “Pom Pom,” though, is that he’s gone all-in – at 17 songs spanning 68 minutes, the album nicks the mainstream radio of Baby Boomers as well as the pioneers, weirdos and pioneering weirdos that induced ’70s kids to keep the damned radio off. Zappa and Ween have been name-checked; I’d like to suggest that Ariel Pink is this generation’s Todd Rundgren. Rundgren is a should-be Rock & Roll Hall of Famer who excelled at experimentation, whimsy and out-and-out iconoclasm; he knew the idioms and how to bend them, and his ’70s albums especially reflected the same artistic ADD and subversiveness that makes Pink so compelling. If there is any contemporary musician worthy of invoking “The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect,” it’s Ariel Pink. Then there’s this Pitchfork interview, of course. And a single, “Put Your Number in My Phone.”

||| Stream: “Put Your Number in My Phone”