The Black Apples

Black Apples began as brothers—and guitarists and vocalists and songwriters—Campbell and Andrew Scarborough, born musicians and multi-instrumentalists whose father had been in Davie Allan and the Arrows, one of those lucky—and later highly collectible—bands that shared stages with the Doors along L.A.’s Sunset Strip during the psychedelic heyday of 1966. And so that’s where they’d start their own band. Black Apples in 2010 were garage rock like papa used to make, and like the Pretty Things and the 13th Floor Elevators used to make, too. They’d release a monster psych-punk full-length—powered by two drummers, just like Detroit’s legendary Dirtbombs—that ably hit all the high notes of the first and second psychedelic eras, an album where the Black Apples proved they could have made friends and stunned fans at any time and place where perfect fuzz guitar is still loved. But that was then, and this is now, and the Black Apples in 2015 have gone beyond the beyond: “The most challenging part now,” laughs Andrew, “is explaining that this is not a garage rock record.” And it’s not a garage rock record. Instead, Black Apples’ upcoming full-length Patio is a pop record, and Black Apples’ new EP is the heart of that pop record; not the deflated digi-pop of today’s top 40, but pop from the days when a song could reach out from the AM radio and make you realize something about your life. This is stars-in-the-sky-over-the-city-at-night music, you-don’t-have-to-take-the-heartbreak music, supremely and lovingly detailed make-the-dreams-come-true music that shines with light reflected from the Beatles to Big Star to the Jesus and Mary Chain to even old-is-new-again indie pop bands like Girls. Those are and were the kinds of bands who could do anything they wanted, who could lift their highs higher and make their lows lonelier, and that’s Black Apples, too. The actual patio that led to the title of their upcoming album belonged to Campbell during the summer of 2013, part of an L.A. apartment where he could look out at the local police helicopters and write through the night.There was a sense of desperation in these songs, he says, the sort of all-or-nothing commitment to the band that inspired the idea of “deluxe survival,” which the Black Apples used to keep their spirits up—or at least keep themselves amused—as they soldiered through the most ambitious recording sessions they’d ever done. With a studio engineer happy to explore the unexplored, they quickly found themselves with a chance to do whatever they wanted. So they made the music they’d always wanted to: “The songs would just build up all day,” says Andrew. “By the end, we’d have something that had completely taken off from where we started.” Painfully selected from the very best of more than forty demos over countless studio sessions at L.A.’s Station House in 2013, Black Apples’ EP atomizes old genre-boundaries like garage. Lead track “Tales And Truths” breaks open right away with big-beat drums by Jorge B. Castellano, then slow-dissolves into a song somehow equal parts Psychedelic Furs and Phil Spector wall of sound, and that’s before the Scarborough brothers come in with a chant-along chorus that rises to the sky. “Get What You Came For” is just a xylophone removed from a lost Chilton-Bell riff, or one of Paul Westerberg’s tear-in-your-beer B- sides, and “Cultivar” is a T. Rex-style reinterpretation of the happy-sad sound of the Zombies. “It’s Not Home” must have been born somewhere in the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Darklands, and “Lions” is the glam-pop swoon-along that Suede would have loved as one of their own. Really, the garage rock days are just fond memories now—well, except for one thing. After all this, Black Apples still rehearse in a garage. Band. Bandits. http://blackapplesmusic.tumblr.com