Apples in Stereo: Classic Gas

Except for Oasis, who seemed to feel no shame in promoting themselves as today's answer to the mighty Beatles (and who needs false idols anyway?), there's been a surprising lack of mainstream response to the once-again flourishing market for Beatlemania. The three double-disc sets of Beatles Anthology that have been released over the past year and a half may have generated some hefty sales figures, which did provide a generous cushion of moved units for the ailing record industry, but there just aren't a lot of artists on the radio right now paying homage to the legacy of the Fab Four. To find the real Beatlemaniacs you have to look to the underground, to places like the Elephant 6 Recording Company and its affiliate bands -- the Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Olivia Tremor Control.

Tucked away in the elevated city of Denver, where the rock scene's seemed thinner than the air for the past few years, rests the nerve center of Elephant 6, a label started by the Apples in Stereo back in '93. Apples singer/guitarist Robert Schneider likens the operation to a "club" or an "extended musical family," which is apt in the sense that the bands affiliated with Elephant 6 are all signed to different labels. Neutral Milk Hotel, who are more or less a one-man project led by the hyperactive Donovan-esque wordsmith Jeff Magnum, released On Avery Island early last year on North Carolina's Merge Records. The most Beatles-inspired Elephant 6 outfit, Athens-based Olivia Tremor Control, are signed to the Newport label Flydaddy. And the Apples in Stereo, whose latest disc is the brand new singles retrospective Science Fair (their own Anthology of sorts), have a deal with spinART.

So, what exactly is Elephant 6?

"We started it to put out the first Apples seven-inch," explains Schneider, who's coming east with the band on a tour that's scheduled for two local stops: next Thursday at the Middle East and March 1 at the Paradise, where they'll be opening for Sebadoh. "At the time, Jeff from Neutral Milk Hotel and Will [Hart] and Bill [Doss] from Olivia Tremor Control were living in Denver. We'd all known each other from growing up together in Ruston, Louisiana, and we'd all played music and recorded together using my four-track. So it was just meant to be a way for some friends to make records together. In a way it's just a continuation of something that started when Jeff and I met each other in second grade, but as a band the Apples still stand on their own as a separate but related entity."

On Science Fair you can hear the Apples in Stereo coalescing as a band, learning to make sophisticated music using low-tech equipment, forging a sound of their own from stray bits and pieces of '60s pop. The disc opens with a warm blast of fuzzed-out, revved-up psychedelia, "Tidal Wave," which is an earlier four-track version of the same song that kicks off the Apples' 1995 spinART debut, Fun Trick Noisemaker. Drummer Hilarie Sidney's roiling backbeat and Schneider's furiously strummed wall of acoustic and electric guitars make up for any lack of polish with an excess of spirit. But it's those irresistible, Beatles-esque vocal melodies that distinguish "Tidal Wave" as something more than just a rough demo.

Elsewhere Schneider pays tribute to his favorite '60s icons, the Brian Wilson Beach Boys, with "Time for Bed," a sleepy romantic ballad that has a floating vocal melody reminiscent of "Surfer Girl." As a songwriter/producer, Schneider clearly identifies with Wilson, or at least with the Beach Boys' penchant for studio experimentation. "I like to tinker with songs a lot. Even when we've used a four-track, the songs end up being real productions. There's a lot of arranging and layering that goes into those tracks."

The Apples, however, haven't so much as set foot in a modern 24-track studio -- at least not yet. They did graduate from four- to eight-track on Fun Trick Noisemaker, and next month they'll finally get their first taste of 24-track at Studio 45 in Hartford. But for Schneider, who produced Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island and co-produced Olivia Tremor Control's Music from the Unrealized Film Script "Dusk at Cubist Castle," it's all about how you use the tracks, not how many tracks you use. "None of the great bands that I admire, bands like the Beatles and the Beach Boys, ever really recorded at their own home studio. But they had enough money to be in control of what was going on. If we ever have a million-dollar recording budget and I'm in a position where I know that I can be in complete control from beginning to end, twiddling knobs and setting up microphones myself, then I would go and do a whole album at a big studio. Our only goal, and the goal of the other Elephant 6 bands, is to make classic music.

-- Matt Ashare

(Apples in Stereo headline upstairs at the Middle East next Thursday, January 30, and open for Sebadoh at the Paradise on Saturday March 1. For an Elephant 6 Recording Company catalogue, write to Box 18326, Denver, Colorado 80218-0326.)