Apes and Androids to Aqua

Apes and Androids - Blood Moon
Blood Moon lies prostrate at the feet of Beck and Prince with a heaping helping of funk mythology borrowed from Funkadelic. The spaceship that descends in "Blood Moon I" is the vessel for the "Riders on the storm," to borrow a lyric from the hypnotically officious "Make Forever Last Forever"; the latter is just one of the many commandments from the would-be interstellar gods of Apes and Androids. The fact that they're really glam versions of the Cobra Kai kids is only mildly deflating.



Blood Moon is really a prism for a single fantasy about a giant space glitter party, refracting this central theme through a handful of different styles as to keep it interesting. "Radio," for one, entertains with a vaguely Oriental swing and "Hot Kathy" is some pretty inventive Paisley Park weirdness.

It all comes to a head in the rapturous mid-record anthem "Nights of the Week," which steals an excellent riff from the Police's "Message in a Bottle," chops it into dozens of little pieces, and tosses them into the sweat and shimmer of the band's hardcore night-owl milieu. It's a thrilling summation of "the scene," applicable as long as young people with more stamina than perspective convene to cause one in claustrophobic spaces.



My only gripe is that too many of the songs on the album's back nine come off as Radiohead retreads. The entire record seems long in the tooth, actually. 18 songs is hefty for a debut. And yet I'm thankful for this excess - the mercurial group of New Yorkers disbanded in 2009, a year after releasing this, their only LP. Turns out it wasn't the stirrings of a true glam rock revival but a pit stop before a return to the Mothership. It's kind of nice to find a band that exits as inscrutably as it enters.

Apostle of Hustle - "I Want A New Drug"
In the summer of 2007, a group of friends planted the seeds of a staggeringly awesome project entitled Are You Still With Me?!, a full album of indie rock covers of songs by Huey Lewis and the News. Like most attempts to redeem the 1980s, it was too good to be true. Three years later we have only the meager fruits of the labor of (mostly) C-list indie rockers. The majority of the proposed tracklist used to be available on an all-you-can-listen buffet of a MySpace page, but the project has stalled for so long that only a few lonely MP3s wander across the Internet, tantalizing the public with what might have been. This thing is the Smile of indie rock covers of 80s pop superstars.



Apostle of Hustle's contribution is, in my opinion, one of the weaker efforts solicited. It is a darker and surprisingly menacing version of the smash hit from 1983's Sports, performed by people who could be talking about actual drugs (as in, I'm tired of these psychotropics, I think I will try painkillers next). Something is lost in the translation.

Aqua - "Barbie Girl"
It is abundantly clear that Scandinavians prefer their pop music to lack pretense (well, most of them, anyway). Aqua's "Barbie Girl" pushes the envelope even further, an airhead anthem for an airhead icon. People complain about the likes of Ke$ha now, but keep in mind that 13 years ago this was a top 10 U.S. single:



Mattel, however, wasn't laughing. They took a break from peddling juvenilized femininity to sue Aqua, which resulted in one of the most appropriately flippant rulings in judicial history: "The parties are advised to chill."

It's kitsch. It's boomerang sideburns. It's the sound of being eight months away from never working again. It's "Barbie Girl."