Truth in advertising is a lost virtue these days, but The Apples in Stereo seem ready to revive it with their latest album, New Magnetic Wonder.
One look at the album cover and you'll get an accurate impression of what the band is trying to do. Their name is written in a 70s-esque sans-serif font. Then there is a collage of eclectic images: a star field with purple nebula, plants, animals, insects and two nude statues.
If these images evoke the sense that this is a dense, lush musical product, then The Apples' art designers have done their job. Combine that with the album's wonky name and the fact that The Apples' lead singer and creative force, Robert Schneider, is one of the founding members of the Vermont-based Elephant Six music collective, and New Magnetic Wonder might just seem like the lost record of a group of Jimmy Carter-era hippie astronauts. That impression is not at all inaccurate.
New Magnetic Wonder is much more than that. Though it has its trippy moments, it's fundamentally more interested in rocking out than it is in psychedelia. The Apples in Stereo have made power-pop for adults. This is a high-tempo album that for the most part avoids becoming overheated in pace, overgrown in layering or oversimplified in pursuit of catchy hooks.
On Magnetic, The Apples call to mind an admirably diverse range of influences, from 1960's pop and 1970's progressive rock to current bands like the Flaming Lips, the Go! Team and the New Pornographers. The Apples even plumb the sounds of the lo-fi and British invasion movements of the 1990s.
Schneider makes his priorities clear from the get-go. On the album's first track, "Can You Feel It?," atonal synthesizer notes drift by. Schneider's synthesized voice tells listeners to "turn up the stereo," and the album gets a-rocking, as a wail of guitar, drums and even a cowbell kick in.
Schneider proclaims that he feels "electric when the beat it starts to flow." When he sings, "drown out the static on the FM radio" because it "makes you feel good," he sets a standard the band has to live up to over the course of the album. On Magnetic they meet that standard.
The second track, "Skyway," barrels ahead with an extra crunchy rhythm section. The band is able to sell lyrics like, "you follow the streets and the cars / and the shadows and the stars" because it backs them up utterly with peppy beats. But the band is aware that fast-paced, poppy guitar and slightly cheesy lyrics might grow tiresome when placed back-to-back over the course of 45 minutes.
That's why every couple tracks over the course of the album they pull back to a short, sparse or ambient track, allowing listeners to cleanse their musical palettes. While some of these are not particularly compelling, others are almost charming, such as the New-York-in-the-30's meets lounge-lizard ambience of "Mellotron 1" and the piano of the 13-second "Droplet." Three of these interludes, "Vocoder Ba Ba," "Hello Lola" and "Joanie Don't You Worry" feature a synthesized voice. "Non-Pythagorean Composition 3" ends the album with the same atonality it begins with, and "Crimson" is a weird, empty, church-bells-from-hell number.
Though these songs serve their purpose of being respites between the more upbeat tracks, the latter are the real attraction here. It is these longer tracks that are the winners on Magnetic. The setting sun guitar of break-up song "Play Tough" sounds like Pavement's "Range Life." If there's ever an Oasis revival in this country, the majestic ballad "Open Eyes" is going to be responsible for starting it.
In December, Stephen Colbert had Schneider on his show to perform a new Apples single, "Stephen, Stephen," that extolled the virtues of the faux newsman. Colbert no doubt hoped his fans would "get it," and enjoy the song. Now The Apples have put forward a great new record. If you're looking for great pop songs spring, you can "get them" by getting New Magnetic Wonder.
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