The Apples in Stereo

I don't know how many people are familiar with the Elephant 6 Collective that really made an important impact on music during the 1990s.

Out of Athens, Georgia, they had bands like the Apples in Stereo, Elf Power, The Minders, Neutral Milk Hotel of Montreal, and this band, the Olivia Tremor Control.

During the 90s, they made a couple of really seminal, important alternative rock albums.

And they broke up, and then they got back together, and they were starting to make a third record.

this selfishly i will i will go back briefly, my entry into Elephant 6 was through Bill.

I moved through, well, through Brian and some other folks, but Bill asked my band, Casper and the Cookies, to go on tour opening for the Apples in Stereo.

Robert saw us.

Bill was our champion.

Yeah.

And that is what happened.

Robert basically convinces this kid who doesn't know anything about Elephant 6 outside of Appleson Stereo.

And then he gets involved and then all of a sudden he learns all the stuff.

And I do think that it's so interesting in the mid 90s, late 90s, to think about these productions that they were doing, because a lot of it was lumped in, of course, with kind of like lower fi indie rock music.

But is there a producer in the mid to late 90s who probably has quite the run that Robert Schneider has? If you talk about Neutral Milk Hotel, the Olivia Tremor Control records, the Minders, Beulah, and then, of course, the Apples and Stereo records as well.

To me, these records never sounded lo-fi.

Right.

especially to the Elephant 6 catalog, because that was arguably, I think, the second Elephant 6 record that I had ever heard.

The first one being Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Airplane Over the Sea.

So afterwards, just listening to the Apples in Stereo and of Montreal, Beulah, all these other groups and the Ladybug Transistor, I was thinking, oh, my goodness, music is incredible.

How did I ignore this for so long?

Uh, there are dips into the Virgin Islands, to New York, to Austin, Texas, to out to Los Angeles, but ultimately, members of the band ended up in Denver, Colorado, and Athens, Georgia.

Robert Schneider formed The Apples in Stereo out in Denver, and then Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel, uh, formed, uh-

I'm sorry

...

I thought that, that got us at least to, like, maybe '93, '94.

All right.

Well, you mentioned The Apples in Stereo.

[laughs] I was close.

He was actually, and still is, a famous independent rock artist.

He was the producer for a band called Neutral Milk Hotel and lead singer for a band called Apples in Stereo, and he had the most fascinating story.

He loved equipment.

He loved to perform with these old microphones, solid-state old microphones and speakers when they went on tour.

Perfect.

My list back in that episode consisted of number five, Sportique, The Kids Are Solid Gold; number four, Advantage Lucy, Citrus; number three, Apples in Stereo, Seam So; number two, Another Sunny Day, one of my favorite feel-good titles, You Should All Be Murdered; and number one, Cleaners From Venus, Only A Shadow.

Now, also during episode 157, we gave an overgeneralized definition and super condensed history of jangle pop, which, I don't know, we could either refer listeners back to that episode or we could replay it during this episode.

Replay it.

In 1997...

The Apples in Stereo released their psychedelic pop album called Tone Soul Evolution.

It was recorded using vintage analog equipment.

It became a staple of the Elephant 6 Collective, had hits like Get in the Car and Signal in the Sky.