The Apples in Stereo - Travellers in Space and Time
Rating
RIYL
Beach BoysElectric Light Orchestra
The Beatles
Release Date
04/20/2010
Label
Yep Roc RecordsTracklist
1. The Code2. Dream About the Future
3. Hey Elevator
4. Strange Solar System
5. Dance Floor
6. C.P.U.
7. No One in the World
8. Dignified Dignitary
9. No Vacation
10. Told You Once
11. It's All Right
12. Next Year at About the Same Time
13. Floating in Space
14. Nobody But You
15. Wings Away
16. Time Pilot
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With 18 years in the "music biz," The Apples in Stereo have seen a lot of things come and go. They’ve been recording through grunge, the boy-band era and the rise of hip-hop and rap. They’ve also kept going through the replacement of all of the founding members of the band, except for songwriter/guitarist/singer Robert Schneider. Yet for all the change they’ve survived, The Apples in Stereo remain amazingly consistent in their recorded output. Travellers in Space and Time, The Apples’ latest release, mines the same vein of sunny, cheery pop as that of their previous albums. The result is that there is a ton of songs that I’ve heard before performed by different groups, but I don’t take exception to their derivative nature because the album’s so doggone likeable.
If you’ve never heard The Apples in Stereo, a lot of what you’ll hear is Schneider’s “near pathological compulsion to write the perfect pop song” (taken from their website). The problem is that this is an ambition that a lot of songwriters have had, and some would even argue that this was already achieved about 45 years ago when The Beatles were in full swing. So as much as I am a power-pop junkie, there’s not a whole lot new here. In fact, a good drinking game might be to down a shot after realizing where you’ve heard a snippet of one of the songs before. “Dignified Dignitary” starts off as a nearly note-by-note rehash of Electric Light Orchestra / The Move’s “Do Ya.” First single, “Dance Floor,” uses keyboard sounds that put me in mind of “Living in the Plastic Age” by the Buggles. And so on. There are others, I promise you.
Where The Apples DO distinguish themselves is in mixing their forward-thinking nature with childlike innocence. In an interview Schneider said that he wrote Travellers in Space and Time because, ''I wanted to make a futuristic pop record, to reach out to the kids of the future. It is what I imagine their more highly-evolved pop might sound like: shiny soul music with robots and humans singing together. We are sending a pop music message through time.'' The form with which he makes this futuristic ideal happen, though, is by using the sounds of the late 1970’s (Disco, vocoder usage) and the early 1980’s (weird keyboard sounds). This was the soul music and pop music that was around when he was a child and that which so obviously made a huge impression on him. So for Schneider, he is using his creative ability as his gift to future generations.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Schneider, who is a mathematician as well as a songwriter, wrote the song “C.P.U.” as an experiment to see if a 12-note musical scale that he developed would work in a pop setting. I’ll leave it to you as to whether it worked or not. If nothing else, it is an interesting collection of sounds.
Travellers in Space and Time is a strong collection of songs with a wonderfully cohesive feel. It features a band which exudes a tangible confidence that they can attain whatever they set out to do. If you are a person who demands that a band do something never heard before, you should probably stay away. For everyone else, though, there should be something here to make you bob your head and tap your foot.
--David Toothman
Comments
Fort Bragg, CA
Great review! I'm really enjoying this album, too. It's amazing how consistent these guys are.
Baltimore, MD
I never listened to these guys before this album. I like a couple songs, and others I've just not got all that into. Can't help but give a middle of the road rating.
Last.fm | RateYourMusic | 8tracks
San Diego, CA
I'm pretty sure the lead singer is a eunuch.
Too old to bother, too young to give a shit.