LaRM day 15 (Apples in Stereo-Arab Strap)

YAY! Massively Beach Boys influenced pop day! It's the Apples in Stereo for the duration and we begin with Fun Trick Noisemaker (1995). This is a bubbling, fizzing, pop-bomb, lively, brisk, guileless and totally, like, super-fun. If it's cheering up you're in need of, Fun Trick Noisemaker will work every time, it's a lovely example of how indie-rock can be as uplifting as any chart-bothering pop rubbish and it marked the beginning of a run of great studio albums. However, before the next one, they released a compilation of early singles and compilation tracks called Science Faire (1996) which although interesting tends to sound too muddily recorded and hasn't got the spirit of the albums. The next album proper is Tone Soul Evolution (1997) which has a slightly more subdued tone in general compared to Fun Trick Noisemaker, but in some ways varying the mood works well and it sounds like there is more confidence in Robert Schneider's songwriting. The pop songs are still jaunty and on the whole it's a great record. Then we have another variation on the theme with 1999's Her Wallpaper Reverie, which has some great pastiches of various 60's bands (some of which even stand up next to the Dukes of Stratosphear's expert pastiches, particularly the late-Beatles mockery of 'Strawberryfire', and it also includes various brief little sound experiments, the like of which would become more prevalent on later Apples in Stereo albums.

The 7" of 'Everybody Let Up' is a good indication of what's to come, being a solidly written, cheerful pop song, and the next album, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (2000), is the real peak for me. This is the first time that the band actually sound completely unique, without the obvious influence of their chosen forbears glaring through. There is no room here for any sonic experimentation either, this is simply great pop songs start to finish. The production is much cleaner, the instrumentation more confident and the hyperactive Schneider manages to keep the songs from running away from him at last and the whole album is another glorious example of a record which demands the windows open and the sun streaming in, any time of the year. Schneider clearly felt that things had got too relaxed and 2002's Velocity of Sound is appropriately named. These less-than-3-minute songs race by in a frenzied flash and while it's a great pop rush it leaves you feeling a bit unfulfilled when it's sped off into the distance, and I can't help but feel the lack of the invention and playfulness of Discovery of a World. There was a long hiatus, presumably to calm down and get some breath back (I saw them play at the Spitz when they were touring Velocity of Sound, and to say that they were lively would be a gross understatement), and 2007 saw the release of New Magnetic Wonder, which to my mind (and apparently nobody else's) was quite a significant step backwards, leaning towards the fiddling about with funny noises that threatened to overtake the songs back in the Her Wallpaper Reverie days and leaving sugar-rush pop songs mostly on the back burner. There are 24 songs here, of which 10 are 10-50 second bits of fun noises, and where before the records felt a bit like you were at a party, New Magnetic Wonder is more like being in a pop laboratory. Again, it's a fine record (and there really are some great songs - 'Same Old Drag' is like a pumped-up Phoenix) with some great moments, but I miss the fun times, dammit.

And to round up it's Arab Strap's first album, The Week Never Starts Round Here (1997). I have always had mixed feelings about Arab Strap. I sort of feel as if it's really just too easy to tell sordid tales about sleazy lives boozing and shagging. Aidan Moffett does have a cool turn of phrase every now and again but on the whole it's just a kind of humourless and fundamentally uninteresting attempt at a Scottish Bukowski-ism. Or should that be Bukowski-ishness? Who knows? Anyway, musically I've always felt that there's a similar problem, one or two really good ideas don't an entire career make (or in Arab Strap's case, an entire album). And I think it was an interesting idea to have a sort of reedy, threadbare, ramshackle folkishness over a subdued drum machine while somebody rambles on in the background. But, again, it's all too easy. It's like reading a novel by a fifteen year old - all guilt-ridden fantasy of a lives ill-lived and I can't help but suspect, with scarcely a scintilla of truth to it all, which would be fine, except that it all sounds so pat. This all sounds like a basic slag-off I suppose, but I do think there are some great ideas in here but the first album particularly lacks any sense of direction or purpose (deliberately perhaps) and that makes it very difficult to find any reason to really engage with it.

And that's it for another day. Lots more, and better, Arab Strap to start tomorrow. Gloooomy.