Ariel Pink Opens up His Archive to Share “Stray Here With You,” Announces Album Reissue Series

Lo-fi weirdo Ariel Pink (formerly known as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti) has spent a good two decades in the indie circuit, collecting critical acclaim all the while for his eccentric vision of ‘70s pop. Now he’s opening up his backlog to his devoted fanbase with the newly announced Ariel Archives series of album reissues, starting this October on Mexican Summer.

The first three albums are Underground, Loverboy and Odditties Vol. 2. Underground is the first album Pink released as part of his Haunted Graffiti project, and, like much of Pink’s obscure early material, has been hard to track down. Somewhat more well-known is 2002’s Loverboy, which was fortunate enough to get a reissue in 2006 on the tiny, now-defunct label Ballbearings Pinatas. Unlike the others, Odditties Vol. 2 (the follow-up to 2008’s Odditties Sodomies Vol. 1) is a completely new release filled with unreleased material spanning the breadth of Pink’s career.

To kick off the project, Pink dropped a reworked version of the track “So Glad” off Loverboy and the previously unreleased single “Stray Here With You” off Odditties Vol. 2. The new “So Glad” gets rid of some of the swirling distortion and haze that clouded the previous release, but keeps the most charming part of the song—its punchy drums—intact. New song “Stray Here With You” is all we can expect from Pink and more: a hummable pop tune with appealingly bizarre lyrics (a solid minute of the track is occupied by Pink chanting, “Beat that game oh daddy”).

In addition, Pink dropped a 10-minute long “announcement video” (a press release’s words) for the Ariel Archives series called “Chapter 8: Some Tutorials.” It’s part of the film Dedicated To Boris Karloff, directed by Salvador Cresta, that’s set to be released next year.

Listen to “Stray Here With You” below and check out the indescribable snippet from Boris Karloff further down. All three reissues will be released on Oct. 25.