Send "The Apples In Stereo " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Allmusic |
 In the three years since the release of New Magnetic Wonder, something strange happened to the Apples in Stereo's Robert Schneider as he was writing songs and plotting for the group’s seventh album, Travellers in Space and Time. Maybe he accidentally caught Xanadu late at night on cable, maybe someone slipped an ELO song onto a mixtape, or maybe he caught a disco oldie while flipping across the radio dial, but no matter where it came from, suddenly the Apples’ main goal in life is re-creating the sound, feel, and magic of ELO and Olivia Newton-John's “Xanadu.” Schneider and the group (which includes Elephant 6 mainstay Bill Doss and a bunch of guys who can do just about anything, including contribute some fine songs to the track list) layer vocoders, disco strings, wacky synths, and pulsing dancefloor beats into their trademark bubblegum indie and come up with an album that will surprise a lot of people. It’s still recognizably an AIS record, there’s no mistaking Schneider's wispy vocals, and there are quite a few songs that chug merrily along like vintage Apples. The preponderance of hooks, too, is trademarked. Still, the new trappings make Travellers sound like the work of a band with a renewed energy, and the joy they put into making it comes out of the speakers like a wave of love and happiness. The only problem people might have with this sea change is if they don’t like ELO. If that’s the case, it’s true that you’ll probably dislike Travellers at first, but if you stick with it, you’ll see that beneath all the glitter and goop, there are some really great songs. For example, you’d be hard-pressed to find a sweeter love song than "No One in the World," a catchier pop song than "Told You Once," or a better arranged song than "It’s All Right." There are songs to dance to ("Dance Floor," "Nobody But You"), songs perfect for headphone reveries ("Floating in Space"), and even a rocked-out track ("Dignified Dignitary") that sounds like an outtake from New Magnetic Wonder. Basically, the album plays out like hit song after hit song. Love or hate the new direction, the Apples have made a long, long career out of constantly changing and reliably creating songs and albums that overflow with hooks and happiness. This may be their hookiest, happiest album yet. You don’t have to be an ELO fanatic to agree with that....full text |
| Popmatters |
| The Apples in Stereo’s Travellers in Space and Time could be considered an aural companion to Sir Patrick Moore’s 1983 book of the same name. Both works attempt to transport us through the solar system and to focus our imaginations on possible futures. Both conjure the future, in the present, using evidence from the past. Thanks to the wonders of light travel distance and redshift, we are actually looking back in time when we see images from space. Similarly, the best Apples in Stereo songs treat the listener to an extraordinary echo of modern music history via bandleader Robert Scheider’s remarkable internalization of previous decades of pop/rock. Although the Apples in Stereo discography has long been popularly classified and referred to as an exercise in revivalism, the band is now particularly direct in announcing Travellers in Space and Time as a sort of time capsule. In a press release, Schneider describes the album as “a futuristic pop record, to reach out to the kids of the future”, and explains his mission to send “a pop message music through time, hoping they will decode it and be into it”. In addition to this statement of programmatic purpose, what most distinguishes this new album from the kind of guitar-driven Nuggets-rock that Schneider and his revolving roster of musicians have delivered over the years is the adoption of disco sounds and techniques. Having heretofore explored a wide gamut of 1960s pop/rock song styles, the band is presently maintaining its three- to four-decade sound travel distance by transitioning into the 1970s and 1980s. Jeff Lynne is a significant, musically historical figure within the Apples in Stereo’s current sound. As the force behind Electric Light Orchestra, Lynne was among an elite class of musician/producers active in the1970s and 1980s that succeeded in the difficult task of pushing pop/rock music forward in a post-Beatles, post- (classic) Beach Boys, post- (classic) Kinks, post-Zombies, post-Love musical landscape. As is the case with other figures like Trevor Horn, Lynne continues to grow in esteem amongst younger musicians and music fans. It is no surprise that some of their contributions are only now being recognized. After all, those long shadows cast by the giants of 1960s pop/rock likely take quite a while to escape. Travellers in Space and Time makes use of several of Lynne’s trademark compositional elements, such as ornate keyboard and string arrangements, layered and vocodered vocals and propulsive bass rhythms. Although the baroque and symphonic styles also favored by ELO are somewhat present here, Schneider is working more fully within the mode of ELO works such as Discovery (1979) and the synthesizer-heavy Time. Listeners’ and critics’ attention to dance songs such as “Last Train to London” and “Shine a Little Love” from Discovery have created a misleading reputation for that album as being representative of ELO’s “disco” phase. Additionally, the album’s original U.S. release just happened to precede the infamous Disco Demolition Night by one month, so it was not an ideal time for Lynne to be trying his hand at the disco sound—something he would do more explicitly the following year by contributing to the soundtrack for the derided Xanadu. As is frequently the case with misfiring or misunderstood works, popular taste has since caught up to this era of Lynne’s output, with even the kitschy Xanadu reaching the Broadway stage in 2007, complete with interpolations of ELO hits....full text |
| Spin |
| Apples frontman Robert Schneider established his love for ELO on 2007's New Magnetic Wonder, and this follow-up reveals a further exploration of that sound. Vocodered backup singers (the first of many) counter an emphatic piano line on "Dream About the Future," cascading harpsichord kicks off "No Vacation," and "Dignified Dignitary" feeds off the "Do Ya" riff. The album also features songs written and sung by other Apples, and while they're perfectly pleasant indie pop, they only accentuate Schneider's mastery....full text |
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