The Apples in Stereo

The Apples in Stereo seem to straddle the boundaries between decades, employing vocodered choruses and synthesized beats to emulate bands like 1970s pop giants Electric Light Orchestra. Their seventh studio effort, “Travellers in Space and Time,” travels indeed; it channels 1970s electropop through the filter of the band’s own 1990s heyday. In subject matter, too, the band straddles boundaries, combining frontman Robert Schneider’s love for science and technology with the band’s musical creativity.

Though this could lead to an excess of ideas, “Travellers” is actually surprisingly cohesive; its synthesizer’s creeping presence serves as a sort of glue. For what the album attempts to be—a kind of 1970s throwback—it succeeds. But it lacks climax, both in specific songs and in “Travellers” as a whole. The album’s topography is linear, and when coupled with simplistic, often cheesy lyrics, the effort seems formulaic. The Apples take a 1970s formula and repeat it without adding much, and so their end product is polished but hardly original.

The album begins with “The Code,” a fuzzy and futuristic spoken-word track. Toward its end a melody enters, melting into the album’s first real song, “Dream About the Future.” The track opens with a piano meditation on the same two chords, layered with drums, the band’s characteristic synthesizer, and quirky sound effects. Frontman Schneider soon interjects, “When I tell you that I need you / You don’t believe me.” Achingly whiny and painfully cliché, the vocals slip into high falsettos often distorted by underwater-like effects. Eventually the verse becomes chorus, “What do you see / When you dream about the future? / Do you see me?”

Though these lyrics may be cheesy, they tie to the album’s 15th track, “Wings Away,” in which Schneider sings, “So we open up and scream / Until it all becomes a dream.” In this instance, the lyrical interplay effectively invokes two separate concepts of dreaming. On other tracks, however, lyrical motifs become merely repetitive, most obviously in the dialogue between “C.P.U.,” “Floating in Space,” and “Nobody But You.” All three tracks explore the themes of departure, with the songs containing lyrics like, “You’ve been gone, you’ve been gone / You’ve been away for too long” and “I’ve been gone for too long,” and “You packed your bags and you went away / Searching for the brighter day,” respectively. Whereas the repetition of dreaming helped tie tracks together, this monotonous, clichéd notion of departure only serves to flatten the album, and suggests a lack of inspiration.

Schneider’s interesting musical experimentation, however, sometimes suggests otherwise. “C.P.U.” was written on a non-Pythagorean scale, a musical innovation of Schneider’s based on natural logarithms that creates an interesting, if somewhat jarring, tonality. His innovation demonstrates a level of inspiration and genuine interest that exceeds the repetitive simplicity of much of the album. Other isolated moments of inspiration, such as the glam-rock riff that opens “Dignified Dignitary,” prove that Apples in Stereo are capable of occasional novelty.

Sadly, even the more original tracks like “C.P.U.” lack structural interest; chorus meets verse meets chorus until the track fades out. “Hey Elevator” is also frustrating, simply repeating the chorus’ two lines at the track’s end, layering one line upon the other without much tonal or vocal variation. One song, however, does break from this monotony. “Dance Floor,” the album’s first single, succeeds in shaping for itself a dramatic arch. About two minutes in, it crescendos, followed by a lull that accentuates this change. The track also boasts an interesting rhythm, one with a sense of momentum brought on by the Apples’ careful use of enjambment: “But my / Body’s still moving,” Schneider sings, “When our / World is so confusing.” “No One in the World” also employs enticing rhythmic and dynamic variation, tricolon decrescendos slipping downward, followed by a tonally heightened resolution with quickened sixteenth notes. But even with these variations, the track’s trajectory remains flat, relying on a repetition of the chorus rather than achieving any kind of climax.

The cuts that make up “Travellers in Space and Time” collectively lack shape; the songs build to nothing, and seem to be electric, synthetic variations on the same retro theme. The lyrics remain blasé, the whine of the vocals can be grating, and though the tracks are often irresistibly catchy, they too seldomnly add anything to the 1970s sound that the Apples wish to emulate. The Apples in Stereo may know their influences, but they struggle to expand upon them.

—Staff writer Hana Bajramovic can be reached at hana.bajramovic@college.harvard.edu.