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Listening to The Apes is kind of
the musical equivalent of wandering into the wrong
college party by accident only to be faced with
a room full of crazy stoners who dress like it’s
1972 and want to talk about philosophy and getting
back to the land, <<man>>.
Let’s just get it out of the way and admit
that this foursome have played with some truly
great bands (Les Savy Fav, The Walkmen, Q &
Not U, Mars Volta etc) and gotten glowing reviews
from some of the country’s biggest music
magazines. Then let’s just say it’s
hard to really care because Baba’s Mount
smacks continually of trying too hard.
You know you’re in trouble immediately
when the first thing you hear is two minutes of
screeching outbursts on a tin whistle, the slow
thud of some kind of hippy drum and the kind of
irritating high-pitched vocals you imagine might
actually have come out of a leprechaun.
Then, the first track proper - called “Baba’s
Mount” incidentally - throws you headlong
into stoner territory with plodding bass, frustratingly
jazzy time changes and lyrics about autumn and
rainbows and all that other bullshit people on
hallucinogens enjoy.
And they just won’t shut up. You think
all the consistently nonsensical lyrics about
lions and children and owls and riding on the
green bus are about as bad as things can get.
And then on “Imp Aah” they go and
outdo themselves: “The imp, the oh, Baba
ha ha ha, yippee aye cokes, chicken oh woah oh”
actually comes out of someone’s mouth. ...At
least that’s what it sounds like. We’ll
never know for sure since they were wise enough
not to include a lyrics sheet.
And on it goes. The organ wails along (did I
mention they use an organ instead of a lead guitar?),
awash with a backing of loops and effects and
samples and anything else they can find that will
make them sound trippy and foreboding.
In fairness, there are people out there that
will enjoy this. And they will be on drugs. And
it will, like, totally blow their minds and they’ll
get all their friends over and smoke bongs and
take acid and they’ll probably all get naked
and do wavy-arm dancing until they can no longer
stand up. But if you’re not one of them,
you’d best avoid this.
www.birdmanrecords.com
Rae Alexandra, April 22, 2005
Rae Alexandra is a limey.
She has been a music journalist and sub editor
since 2001, working mainly for the UK’s
Kerrang! and Q Magazines. She recently relocated
to San Francisco to finish writing a novel about
drunken punk rockers. Feel free to send job offers,
insults and photos of emo boys to: raemondjjjj[at]yahoo.com.
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