Passion fruit

>> The Apples in Stereo reveal their
wonky hobbies and hobbit connections

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

After five years of silence from the Apples in Stereo comes New Magnetic Wonder, a stunning exercise in pop excess inspired primarily by Brian Wilson’s Smile and ELO’s greatest hits. The album’s enormity is a reflection of its sprawling recording sessions, which took place over a year and across the U.S., in the band members’ home studios (they live in Dallas, Athens, Denver and Lexington) and in New York City with noted indie rock producer Bryce Goggin.

Not only does New Magnetic Wonder mark the debut of Elijah Wood’s Simian Records label and the return of the Elephant Six imprint—a “seal of approval by a group of old friends,” according to the Apples’ Eric Allen, including bands such as Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel (whose members play on the record)—it also introduces a new musical scale conceived by the band’s singer, chief songwriter and math hobbyist Robert Schneider. You may have seen Schneider on The Colbert Report recently, singing an appropriately nerdy and slightly homosexual tribute to the faux-conservative pundit (listen to “Stephen Stephen” on the band’s MySpace page). The Mirror called Allen, on the road in Kentucky, to try and make sense of it all.

Mirror: Recording in five cities must have its pros and cons.

Eric Allen: It was a good thing in a way, because Robert would take tracks back to Kentucky, and instead of being in the studio and just having to bust out the whole album in six weeks, things could germinate, you could listen to a song for a few months and try different things on it. I think we probably got different sounds just by being in different cities too. We did some of it out in Denver, and I know those guitars sound different than they would have if they’d been recorded in New York.

M: So I understand you guys met Elijah Wood at South by Southwest in 2003.

EA: Yeah, he just came up to us after a show and it was like, “Holy shit, that’s Elijah Wood,” and he said he was a fan and we kept in touch with him. Then we heard through the grapevine that he wanted to start a label and he was interested in the Apples, and so he visited us one day at the studio in New York and listened to some new songs and it developed from there. We were like, “Hell yeah, we’d love to be on Elijah’s label.”

M: Any idea who else he may sign, or if there’s a musical style he wants to stick to?

EA: He’s got really, really broad tastes, so just from talking to him and knowing what he listens to, whatever the next thing is, it could be something really different.

M: Could you shed some light on this “non-Pythagorean scale” that Robert devised?

EA: It’s completely beyond me. Robert’s explained it to me about four times and he’s dumbed it down so much, but I don’t know what the hell it’s all about. His hobbies are theoretical physics and mathematics that you can’t even conceive the application of—at least I can’t. I studied literature.

With Casper and the Cookies at
Main Hall on Monday, Feb. 19, 8:30 p.m., $15