When bands, and in this case, collectives, reach the cult status that Elephant 6 quickly attained after they stopped pumping albums out of Athens, Georgia, a lot of time is spent listening to and tracing the quality of their releases. With one of the bigger discographies from the collective, The Apples in Stereo provide a lot to analyze, and there is a clear peak and fall.

Their first three albums, culminating in the beautiful Her Wallpaper Reverie exist in a sort of exclusive universe. Fun Trick Noisemaker begins with a beautiful sequence that runs as smoothly as any other, as “The Narrator” transitions beautifully into “Tidal Wave”, and the same can be said as the third track “High Tide” begins. The album never lets up and tracks like Dots 1, 2, 3 and Glowworm reach levels of pop perfection not heard in decades.

Sadly though, somewhere along the way the Apples fell off the track, and started making records that lacked much creativity, and the cheese-pop of “World Inside the Moone” may have garnered a Power Puff theme song, but its appeal as a whole was rather shallow and short lived.

This may seem like a digression, but its important to think about when listening to this wondrous return to form. As many artists can attest, records that are simply pop hold little weight, and while they may produce a catchy song or two, the listening value is again…shallow. This album, much like those first three by this band, contains depth, not only in quantity of tracks or time, but also in its eclectic sound.

The poppy tracks here are as glorious and numerous as on any other Apples in Stereo record, and they do provide the moments you’ll remember and enjoy most from the album. Songs like “Can You Feel It?” and “Skyway” have all the powerpop elements of the standards, with as many “doo-doo”s and verse-chorus-verse moments you could want. Furthermore, the Apples reach even deeper into the world of peppy songs with “Same Old Drag”, which is upbeat and danceable, with a piano line and hushed “oohs” that would even go over well on the dance floor.

While these highlights are definitely pop songs, something which few modern bands do as well as Schneider and Co., it is the songs which are a bit more complex, not necessarily psychedelic, which make listening to this album a much more rewarding experience. From the number of short interludes which provide the album with an excellent flow that softens its hour length, to tracks like “Sun Is Out” which has a lo-fi aesthetic similar to Schneider’s Marbles recordings, this album’s strength is in how effortlessly the band shifts from sugary pop to slower more contemplative tracks.

One of the best examples of this is “7 Stars” which travels so far around the musical map (all the while remaining a pop track) that it alone justifies this album being dubbed a true return to form. The second half of the album (of which “7 Stars” is a hinge moment aurally) is tremendous overall, and transitions beautifully, especially 16-18, of which the awesome “Open Eyes” forms the basis. “Pre-Crimson” and “Crimson” in particular are tracks that are unlike anything we’ve heard on an Apples in Stereo album since Her Wallpaper Reverie, an album I consider essential listening from the 90s indie-pop scene and one of the best in the E6 catalogue.

This is repeated with the 21st and 22nd track, which are multi-parters, the second being a beautifully mellow tripped out reverb heavy cool-down from the first. The more somber tone of the track allows the lyrics “oh don’t you know it’s right/oh don’t you know it’s wrong, we’ll be forgotten when we’re gone” to be sung…proving that for all their sugary aesthetics, when this band wants to they can touch something far deeper. The band seems to know what element of their sound is most affecting as the album ends with a simple synth outro that once again hints at the vignettes from Her Wallpaper Reverie. As Schneider himself says, “I think that trying to make music that’s soulful and has fire and humanity is more important than making music that’s artful. I really believe that”, and it’s the moments of soul and fire, which are also “artful” in the pop sense that are the peaks of this album.

What excites Schneider most about this record is how satisfied he himself is with it; he doesn’t feel much is lacking or lament having left parts out here and there. Listeners should be able to recognize this attention to detail without much effort, as this is a virtually flawless effort from an excellent band that took some time off to get back to doing what they do best.

MP3:
Can You Feel It?
Same Old Drag

-- Jack Pereira

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Record Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.