Maybe this is why it took five years for Apples In Stereo to record a new album: Frontman Robert Schneider was busy inventing a new musical scale, which he calls “non-Pythagorean.” Also, there were personnel changes, including the departure of drummer and singer Hilarie Sidney (who stayed long enough to sing on a couple tunes).
Sonic shifts aside, Biting into Apples’ latest does not require extensive knowledge of music theory or facility with organizational flow-charts, just a love of smart, bright pop music. New Magnetic Wonder is bright the way Times Square at night is bright, and just as vibrant. Sweeping melodic hooks cut through densely packed musical arrangements — Schneider used 96 tracks of instrumentation on some tunes — on fourteen dizzying songs and twelve segues linking them together.
You get the feeling sometimes that Schneider had more ideas for this album than he knew what to do with, so he packed as many different sounds as possible into every song on the record. His manic arranging pays rich dividends on “Same Old Drag”, where the solo piano intro refracts into several distinct organ parts buoying up stacks of vocal harmonies, all of which yield to a punchy, effects-laden guitar solo. He dabbles with backward vocals at the start of “Open Eyes”, undercuts the high-fidelity sheen of the record with a scratchy lo-fi fingerpicked guitar sound on “Sun Is Out”, and keeps things (relatively) simple on the bouncy, acoustic-guitar-based pop of “Energy”.
