July 19–26, 2001

cd reviews|rock/pop

The Apples in Stereo

Let’s Go

(SpinArt)

The wonderful thing about rock ’n’ roll is its unparalleled capacity to be perfect. For the three minutes that you’re listening to a great rock song, it simply is the greatest song ever written. The best rock ’n’ roll, then, renders music history a moot point. This rock solipsism comes very much in handy for a band like the Apples in Stereo, who’ve built a career on partying like it’s 1965. The Denver quintet has released three albums that owe a tremendous influence to the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and that have included some five songs that more or less plagiarize "You Won’t See Me." They’ve gotten away with this thanks to the songwriting genius of head Apple Robert Schneider, who composes so well in the McCartney/Wilson tradition (no Lennon here) that even the most jaded listener is too busy singing harmony and clapping on 2 and 4 to call him derivative. The new Apples EP, Let’s Go, offers a few more of these sublime rock ’n’ roll moments. The release is based around "Signal in the Sky," which Schneider wrote for the Cartoon Network series Powerpuff Girls. The song, which appears here in both polished and demo form, is a sugary treat filled with "Ooo-waa Ooo-waa"s, and lyrics about the tribulations of being a superheroine who never has time to play with her friends. This theme of cartoonish frustration pops up again in the best song on the EP, the surprisingly Jackson Five-like "If You Want to Wear a Hat," which details the impossibility of acquiring a nice hat (roughly, because to do so you need money, for which you need a job, for which you must stop dressing like a slob). The band rounds out the disc with a beautiful acoustic outtake of "Stream Running Over" from their most recent album, and with a fairly bad live cover of the Beach Boys’ "Heroes and Villains." This latter failure to directly cover their heroes, however, only highlights the Apples’ skill at covering them indirectly.

—Ben Remsen