The glistening cosmic thumps that kick off “Strawberryfire,” reverberating as though the drums were filled with nebulae. The piano in “Same Old Drag,” which sounds ... (more)
Bio: Most of all, those sounds!
The glistening cosmic thumps that kick off “Strawberryfire,” reverberating as though the drums were filled with nebulae. The piano in “Same Old Drag,” which sounds like it’s been sitting neglected at the back of some high school band room, occasionally mis-plunked by time-killing students, brought to sudden life for a dance routine starring the cast of Xanadu. But that tripped-out wah-wah pedal...out of nowhere, what else could be there? The harmonies are not by the Bee Gees or Jeff Lynne; they’re by the groupies, kicked up on pixie sticks, and that’s exactly what they should sound like.
Almost everything by The Apples in stereo sounds exactly as it should. Sure, they grew, they refined their tastes and their tastes slightly shifted, and they sharpened their talents for seizing at just that right sound, whether by an esoteric instrument or the most obvious, but in any given example it’s exactly what it should be; it’s the song that was always there, that you were always humming before it had an artist to sing it, and of course there could be no other way for it to sound—but this overripe, this front-loaded, this bursting at the seams. And Robert Schneider had to find it for you: get every note shimmering, and mix it loud.
When The Apples in stereo first started making music, over fifteen years ago, it was bizarre, if not downright insane, to claim Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys as your primary text. To name your studio (or, rather, your converted garage) after Pet Sounds spoke of a zealotry of a deeper color. And at first perhaps only music enthusiasts (i.e. critics and you) caught on to what The Apples were doing; but they loved it. Robert Schneider and The Apples in stereo—initially Hilarie Sidney, Jim McIntyre, and Chris Parfitt, with John Hill stepping in by the band’s second EP; later Eric Allen, Chris McDuffie, Bill Doss, John Ferguson, John Dufilho, and numerous guest stars—were given by those fans some space to stretch out, and across each album, from 1995’s Fun Trick Noisemaker straight through to 2007’s New Magnetic Wonder, the band is like a field trip of miscreants set loose in one sound museum after another, playing with all the instruments and noisemakers they’re not supposed to touch. It’s all of a piece, of course. When Robert sings, it always sounds like a Robert song, and the same goes for Hilarie. But the band appropriates everything, so that the definition of a Robert or a Hilarie song can stretch elastically from album to album, and that’s one of the first things you notice when you listen to this selection. Velocity of Sound is blistering, Nuggets-style garage rock. The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone is psychedelic funk. Tone Soul Evolution is daydreaming, Smiley Smile pop. But none of it feels like the band outside their element; the element is now in the band. It’s on drums. If you’ve ever met Robert, you know that’s his attitude: if you can contribute, contribute. It’s the ethos of the collective he helped start. Create. Make something fantastic, whoever you are, and make it in your bedroom if that’s the only place you can. It’s only more impressive if you made it out of nothing.
Robert began recording in bedrooms, on cassettes, doodling catalogs and poetry books for a recording and distribution outfit he and his friends called The Elephant 6 Recording Company. Will Cullen Hart (The Olivia Tremor Control, Circulatory System) provided the logo, to be stamped as an instantly-recognizable brand, and together with friends Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel) and Bill Doss (The Olivia Tremor Control, The Sunshine Fix, The Apples in stereo), the E6 Collective was born. Robert and Will jointly composed a manifesto, scrawled on the back of one of their catalogs of homemade recordings: “Our aim is to put innovative, quality pop music into the world. We believe in four-tracks, and homespun sounds & devices, and most of all we believe in SONGS.” Flip that catalog over and you could’ve purchased the first 7” EP by a band called, at the time, just The Apples. The description of Tidal Wave should have earned your blind buy: “Timeless ringing fuzz-soaked pop: two guitars, bass, and a long-haired drummer send you to the catchiest rock & roll galaxy in the universe.” Only four bucks, and you’d also get stickers, a fold-out poster (photocopied), and an actually quite lovely, elaborate booklet, with lyrics and profusely illustrated, as if everyone in the world knew who The Apples were and this was the fan club special edition. If you got to spinning the record, that same infectious enthusiasm would zap straight out of the needle and into your skull. You’d line up for the Apples fan club too.
Friends of similar temperament were made, and the E6 Collective grew and grew, from Ruston, Louisiana, to Denver, Colorado, to Athens, Georgia, and Brooklyn, New York—and beyond—until there was a real roster to fill out a thick and glossy catalog, if one were to assemble it. But even now, listening to New Magnetic Wonder in all its sonic glory, you can still hear the gleeful way Robert tries to get away with something improbably bigger than its origins. New Magnetic Wonder is lush and sprawling. It’s the album you would expect a band at the pinnacle of critical acclaim and record sales to produce as their defining statement when all eyes are turned to them and they have to respond with a Sgt. Pepper—but these are The Apples in stereo. This is the little band that the critics play in their spare time, that the bloggers enthuse about while the mainstream looks elsewhere. So the result is not bloated, it is not overreaching. It’s The Apples doing what they always did. They know how to make an epic on a small budget, and you can’t help but be won over when they pull it off. Again.
And yet, their discography lends itself to a “greatest hits” compilation very easily. They’re hermaphroditic that way, a singles band and an album band, because they’ve divided their attention equally. One could write a biography of The Apples in stereo as a quest for the perfect three-minute single, a tack that’s come back into fashion in recent years, although they were there at the revolution: Fun Trick Noisemaker, as well as the singles and EPs which preceded it, contain numerous jabs at this goal, the most eminent being “Tidal Wave.” The riff which kicks it off is one of the best in their resumé, and still seems pretty muscular in its four-track single version, as much as in the eight-track album version, which is a bit less sloppy and a bit more spacey (personally, I love both). “Winter Must Be Cold” is one of Hilarie’s best tracks for The Apples, with druggy harmonizing, so that Robert doesn’t seem to be harmonizing exactly, but trying to catch up—dragged back lysergically. I’m assuming this is an LSD reference but it still doesn’t make total sense as he’s using it here. Also wondering if he might mean lethargically. But I’m fairly sure it’s the former explanation.
Tone Soul Evolution saw the band tucking their shirts in, polishing their sound, projecting their idealized images. “Seems So” ostensibly describes a UFO encounter, a la The Byrds’ “Mr. Spaceman;” but plots are always less important in Apples songs than hooks. The Byrds comparison is more important when it comes to the jangly guitar, the yearning vocals, the gentle psychedelia, the “ooh”s of the chorus and backing vocals. And the fact that it sticks in your head, of course. By the title, you’d be forgiven to think “Shine a Light” is the band’s take on AM gospel. There’s a crucial difference: it’s not God, but the singer who’s shining a light—on you. Not that the song doesn’t sound like 70’s sunshine all over, in that primary-colored, Schoolhouse Rock “Conjunction Junction” kind of way. Listen to how important the chugging horns are (courtesy Denver’s Perry Weissman 3), and how they politely trade places with the spacey electronic sounds, as though in a duet.
If Her Wallpaper Reverie has a slight whiff of self-consciousness that’s unusual for the band, that feeling of the band “doing” heavy psychedelia, it hardly matters when the songs on offer rank among the best of the band’s career. With “Strawberryfire,” there’s that gorgeous contrast, the delicate acoustic guitar slipped into the center of an overwhelming—not a Wall of Sound, but a Library Case of Sound, stacked up for reference in Robert’s card catalog of a mind. And what can you say about “Ruby” except that it perfects that pop music staple, the gibberish chorus (“ba-ba-ba-ba,” “mmm-la-la-la”), enough that it’s become the ideal encore in live shows. The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone retained the psych but with deep doses of George Clinton and Sly & the Family Stone, most evident on “The Bird That You Can’t See.” Criticisms? Perhaps he sings “girl” too much—count them! Rather, scream them, and shake your hands about. Dig that horn section freakout which just goes on and on, wilder and wilder, perfectly aware of how ridiculous it is. This is fun music. Speaking of horns, “Go” just explodes with them. For a long time it was the song I would play for skeptics. It was what you’d play to convert someone; the gospel. With “The Rainbow” and “20 Cases Suggestive of...” we’re in Revolver territory (or at least riding inside the Yellow Submarine), which is familiar treading ground for The Apples in stereo, but here it all is just so vibrant—already the band was learning to keep it simple but make it more so.
Animator Craig McCracken was an Apples in stereo fan, and somehow you can intuit this just by looking at any given seconds of The Powerpuff Girls. But “Signal in the Sky,” written for the Powerpuff Girls soundtrack Heroes & Villains (and issued on the Let’s Go! EP), was deemed worthy enough for a music video by Will Vinton Studios (who were behind The California Raisins and various stop-motion TV specials throughout the 80’s). In the video, a giant purple monster goes rampaging through the city of Townsville, even assaulting the good Apples, who are just trying to perform in peace. The track was also integrated into the episode “Superfriends,” featuring a cameo by an animated version of the band, along with other playful Apples references.
Everything is turned up and plugged in—and stripped down—on Velocity of Sound. Everything’s also faster, so Robert’s vocals are pitched unusually high on their single, “Please.” It applies a layer of sugar to the hard edges. (For harder edges, check out Robert’s mono side project, Ulysses.) Appropriately enough, the music video showed the band exuberantly zipping around Lexington in go-karts.
He jumps right into NMW here. Makes it seem like he’s still talking about VofS. With masochistic glee, Robert overlays a live audience recording in the final seconds of “Can You Feel It?”--“Turn it down! Everything’s feedbacking, can’t you hear it?!” As Robert told me, “Those people were dicks!” with a delighted smile. Everything can be appropriated. This is the first song Robert co-wrote with Bill Doss, one of the founding members of Elephant 6. And an Elephant 6 reunion was assembled to play on “Sun is Out,” which takes the simplest of melodies and throws a cacophony of sounds in its direction; you’re encouraged to sing along and bang on something noisy, as well. Similarly, the tune of “Same Old Drag” could hardly be simpler, but it’s one of the most exquisite recordings in the band’s catalog. All of New Magnetic Wonder was influenced by ELO, and this has the same neon gloss as a “Don’t Bring Me Down” or “Mr. Blue Sky.” When I first heard “Energy” I was convinced that The Apples had written this song decades ago, and now, yes, I could only hear it because Robert finally wrote the damn thing. It’s a starting point perhaps, a building block for the band’s philosophy, but at this stage in their career they can make it an anthem, make it soar: the perfect three-minute single discovered at last. (Well, three-and-a-half...there’s always next time.) The video, the directorial debut of actor and Simian Records label magnate Elijah Wood, follows the same philosophy—just the band and their instruments, straightforward, and let the song rock.
Once, not terribly long ago, Robert Schneider was leaving his bedroom only so that he could record his toilet flushing, just to play it backwards on four-track for a trippy effect. He was scratching out lyrics for liner notes, photocopying pamphlets of “Robert P. Schneider” limericks for any who might want to order them, and having tee-shirts made with the logo designed by his friend Will. He wanted to be a Tin Pan Alley musician, and he sang songs about laughing and swimming and loving Alice D. This album is for bedroom dreamers. (less)
