Album Review: Shall Noise Upon by Apollo Sunshine

More than 40 years after the Summer of Love, you'd think that all the musical vistas of the lysergic experience would have been covered, but Boston's Apollo Sunshine clearly have something they'd like to tell you after you've taken a close look at the tiny bit of blotter paper they're holding in their collective hand. Their third LP, Shall Noise Upon, is a musically ambitious and eclectic bouillabaisse of pop, folk, indie rock, and unspecified trippiness that joyously celebrates its 21st century variation on the hippie dream of good vibes and stuff that sounds pleasingly messed up. When they're not cheerleading for universal love ("Brotherhood of Death"), calling for the abolition of money in favor of following your bliss ("Money"), and praising the home planet ("Singing to the Earth"), the wide-eyed young men of Apollo Sunshine are layering their clever, hooky little tunes with lots of harmonies, plenty of keyboards, bunches of guitar, and periodic spells of free-form electronic anarchy.

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Eclectic rockers come into their own, construct beauteous art-rock nuggetsOn third album Shall Noise Upon, Apollo Sunshine finally focuses its kaleidoscope long enough to savor the sights. Never troubled by the problem of finding a voice so much as slowing down the torrent of post-everything fuzz guitar, tempo shifts and schizoid stomps, the trio here finds a middle ground between melody and experimentation. Part is simply a matter of consolidating structures—verse/weirdness/verse—but there’s also a newfound grace and, in that, an even-keeled mission.

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