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Music
Aug 08, 2008, 05:32AM

Ray of Light

Apollo Sunshine’s new record begs for “album of the year” superlatives.

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Even with the $4/gallon gas and the high price of coffee and beer, 2008 is turning out to be a pretty good year. Only a couple of months after Fleet Foxes released their brilliant self-titled debut on Sub Pop Records, another band in the post-Olivia Tremor Control line has come out with an album of terrific experimental psychedelic folk pop. Apollo Sunshine's third album, Shall Noise Upon, available now on vinyl and digital download, and out next month on CD, is by far the band's best yet (and that's saying something after their excellent 2005 self-titled album). Alternatively rockin' ("666 - The Coming of the New World Government," "Brotherhood of Death") and dreamy ("Breeze," "We Are Born When We Die”), full of reverb and wild instrumentation, and not at all the kind of overly technical (read: unlistenable) music you would expect from three Berkeley grads, Shall Noise Upon sounds like a completely awesome mix between Of Montreal and the Fruit Bats (and rivals any album either of those bands have put out).

Apollo Sunshine is Jesse Gallagher on keyboards/bass/vocals, Sam Cohen on guitar, and Jeremy Black on drums. And though their previous two albums have been well received both critically and commercially (they were featured in this 2005 Rolling Stone article on up-and-coming bands and have toured with the likes of Built to Spill and The Walkmen), Shall Noise Upon is a breakthrough. Recorded in the Catskill Mountains, and expertly produced by Quentin Stoltzfus, formerly of Mazarin, Shall Noise Upon, like The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots or The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's, adds up to something wonderfully beautiful even on the first listen. Here it's a hippie-ish celebration of nature and love—“Love in a world of 'dangers'—real and false," as the band puts it—but always with a certain chaotic frenzy, both musically and lyrically. Songs like "666 - The Coming of the New World Government," with their noisy guitar and synth solos, threaten to fall apart again and again, but always return to their pop structures. Even the short songs, "Shall Noise Upon," "Wolf Frog White," and "Coyote Hearing," which together total less than a minute, are fun and raucous and don't come off as throwaways. And when the style turns to Latin samba ("Remember") or groove-funk ("The Funky Chamberlain"), for example, it all fits right in.

Not to overdo the praise, but Shall Noise Upon is musical artistry at its finest, from a band full of endless talent and frenetic energy. For now, you can preview the album on JamBase, or watch the video for "Breeze." And if you're in Massachusetts this weekend, you can see them in Wellfleet (8th and 9th) and Boston (11th). If the video below is anything to go by, their live shows are just as incredible as their albums (I've heard that frontman Jesse Gallagher has been known to play bass with one hand and keyboards with the other while singing). When it comes to album of the year, Fleet Foxes set the bar pretty high back in June, but Apollo Sunshine just set it higher.

Discussion
  • not to be too harsh, but these guys sound pretty boring...standard vanilla indie rock that pitchfork would love. same with fleet foxes (puke).

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  • Hey, I wouldn't go that far. It's not that often that you hear an indie band with not only good instrumentals but decent singing. I'd even call these guys pretty good singers. Reminds me of The Allman Brothers a little bit. I also really dug the creative but non-dominating use of guitar pedal effects in the video posted. Pretty cool stuff, I'll be sure to check out their new album.

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  • Wow spongeluke, it was great to hear someone transgressive enough to criticize pitchfork. You tell em, they sure are lame with their american apparel distressed t's and converse sneakers - i bet all they listen to is modest mouse. seriously, you think you could come up with something more compelling to say about music than vanilla, pitchfork sucks, and vomit - real informative. with commentary like that, you yourself could maybe even one day write for the fork.

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  • apollo sunshine is the perfect pitchfork band: supposedly edgy, but safe; that's all there is to say about it, really. this is a boring band, or at least one that only inspires indifference. what else is there to say? and no, I'm not trying to be transgressive at all, just honest.

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  • Well it's good to see you could "puke" out a few intelligible sentences. Would you mind if I asked you what kind of music you liked.

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  • well, my favorite album of the year so far is el guincho's "alegranza!", and I really dig black dice, boards of canada, lightning bolt, and flying lotus. but I also really like a lot of more rock stuff, like sonic youth, dinosaur jr., modest mouse, wilco, early weezer, and interpol. look, a lot of stuff that pitchfork hypes is worth checking out (see animal collective; and I even kinda like that vampire weekend record), but a lot more of it is just boring, vanilla garbage that is no more remarkable than stock bar bands. and while I realize how super alt it is these days to hate on pitchfork, I don't think they're an abomination; the news section is the best on the internet. but with all the power they have, they should be promoting more noteworthy artists, not ones that are bland as sandpaper (see the hold steady). not that ANY of that has ANYTHING to do with my original comment. all I'm saying is that this band is boring. you really don't have to be so holier than thou and snobby about it.

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  • It's not about being holier or snobby about it, but by basing your taste on abstract terms such as "edginess," you play into the worst aspects of the the media's coverage/criticism of music. It's one thing to say a band isn't interesting, but another to say they aren't edgey like they are supposedly supposed to be. Edgey can mean anything and nothing at the same time: they fight with tire irons, they have pictures of naked babes on their album cover, they are really skinny/boney and thus physically "edgey." ?

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  • When did the word "edgy" become "edgey"?

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  • I have never and never will base my taste on ANYTHING but how I like the actual music. if I gave you the impression that I did, I apologize. the band's bland sound doesn't interest me because I don't like the music, not because I don't think it's experimental enough. at the end of the day, if a song or a band sounds good to me, I like it, and if not, I don't. really. to base your taste on abstract terms like edgy would indeed be silly. I despise most music journalism; I think it's mostly pointless because it's really just one person telling you their opinion of a very personal experience. I don't pay much attention to it.

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  • Man, who cares if he bases his musical taste on Pitchfork or whatever. Man, this strive to be indie thing is really complicated. First you gotta like the indie bands then when they get big you gotta hate em' then you gotta listen to pitchfork then you gotta trash talk it then you gotta go to local shows then to be more indie you gotta go to underground illegal shows. Man, its so complicated.

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  • haha. i was a little skeptical when you said they sounded like of montreal mixed with fruit bats but better than both. to me it would seem like the cutesy sound of fruit bats would just make of montreal sound worse and more typical. i will check this band out though, mostly because i like the name of their album. i enjoyed the debate about indie-ness and pitchfork. it's all just this vortex of culture that the internet created and somehow makes hipsters across the country all the same. but fleet foxes, el guincho, we should still enjoy them.

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  • I actually don't read Pitchfork anymore. I keep up with what's coming out through 3 or 4 trusty music blogs -- The Yellow Stereo, etc. I don't know what Pitchfork said about Fleet Foxes or Apollo Sunshine, and, like SpongeLuke, I don't care. It's not that I have anything against Pitchfork, really, though I don't like their 0-10 rating system, and will direct you all to Charlie Wilmoth's "All Y'All Haters" article on that point. http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/651 In my reviews, what I try to do is offer history, context, and some internet linkage. The more mp3s and YouTube videos I can give you the better. When I do offer opinions, like 'Shall Noise Upon' may be album of the year, I try to back that up, but that is of course just my opinion -- and it doesn't have anything to do with Pitchfork.

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  • Oh, and Rebecca: I think Apollo Sunshine (on this album anyway) combines Of Montreal's post-Sgt. Pepper's experimental psychodelia with the more straightforward folk pop of the Fruit Bats.

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  • They sound like a band I'd like, whether or not they're vanilla. And I do love Fleet Foxes. Will, I get most of my music from Pitchfork, is that necessarily a bad thing. They highlight new and talented bands.

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