Thee American Revolution

A side project from Robert Schneider of the Apples in Stereo and fellow Athenian Craig Morris has been in deep storage for years. Their debut album Buddha Electrostorm finally got a release via Fire Records, and it's pretty fine, loosely structured, lo-fi psych a la the Dukes of Stratosphere. I really hated the last Apples in Stereo, but I kind of like this.

Here's a video for the song "Grit Magazine," which, oddly enough, my grandmother used to subscribe to, and I can remember reading old issues at her house. (They were full of homespun humor and uplifting stories and, I think, crafts projects...very heartland in the 1970s.) I may have even had a poem in there once...can't remember.

Anyway, check it out

My painful week listening to Apples in Stereo

Boy, you thought I was mean to the National, you should see me when I really get mad. Here’s a review of the new Apples in Stereo, a band which has now used up all of the (considerable) goodwill it earned with the wonderful Discovery of a World Inside the Moone. My favorite track, by a large factor, was the one by drummer John Duhfilo, because it sounds a lot like the Deathray Davies.

The review:

Here’s a depressing thought. Robert Schneider has seen the future…and it looks a lot like 1970s AM radio.

The seventh full-length from the Elephant 6’s psych-bubblegum survivors owes a heavy debt to polyester-era acts like Hall & Oates, Michael Jackson and, especially, ELO, all shipped off in a Ed Wood-style tinfoil spaceship. It’s futuristic, but only in a jokey Planet 9 sort of way, with repeated use of vocoders and gleaming, plasticky synths. But in the more important, musical way, it’s a rocket-sized throwback to a period that, really, does anyone miss?

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