APPLES IN STEREO - Travellers In Space And Time

This new Apples In Stereo record is an embarrassment, from a band that has delivered moments of real, lucid authority in the past but now gets lost wandering through interstellar journeys and time shifts. Replayed several times over, "Travellers In Space And Time" leaves absolutely nothing behind: a run of sixteen tracks, each more forgettable than the last, despite their undeniable catchiness.

The goal is all too obvious: lean into heavily danceable modes to break into less demanding market niches and maybe pick up some spins in more alternative dancefloor circles. It's no accident that the programmatic glam-disco of "Dance Floor" was chosen as the lead single.

But in what kind of indie-oriented dj set could you ever possibly find these bland songs, light years away from the flashes of brilliance of the best Chemical Brothers, LCD Soundsystem or (just to name someone who's recently been talked and written about endlessly) Four Tet?

Three years on from the more accomplished and ambitious "New Magnetic Wonder", Robert Schneider and co. release this new collection of compositions that probes the Apples In Stereo's possibilities for opening up ever further towards a low-ambition brand of pop. But the end result is really unconvincing, and on top of that the band miserably fails in its attempt to slap an indie veneer (so very hype) onto the whole thing.

On some tracks they reach for vague connections to alt-rock, at other moments they seem to want to edge towards a sort of colorless late-70s funk, and elsewhere still they land on territory close to the quintessentially 80s dance sounds ("Nobody But You"), the plasticky kind, to put it plainly.

Perhaps we could just about salvage "Hey Elevator", or the more reflective "Floating In Space" and "Wings Away". For the rest, "C.P.U." would like to evoke early Blur but ends up almost grating on the ear, "Dignified Dignitary" might have some interesting flourishes, but gets lost in the lackluster overall design, and elsewhere the use of vocoder leads straight back to the dream of certain Daft Punk experiments.

Digging around the web, you can find traces of ill-advised comparisons to Jeff Lynne's ELO, particularly their disco-era output like "Shine A Little Love", or, and here things get downright dire, to the sublime pop architecture of the Beatles!

But "Travellers In Space And Time" isn't worth a millionth of Lynne's talent, let alone that of the Liverpool quartet. In a few weeks hardly anyone will remember this little handful of songs, and for once that will truly be for the best.

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19/05/2010