Travellers In Space and Time

The seventh Apples in Stereo album looks back at a time when DIY referred only to home repair and the Top 40 was every musician's goal. Of course, the irony is that in 2010, a band recording in their living rooms can produce an album every bit as slick as studio-tanned pros could manage in the 1970s, which makes these songs -- glossy-smooth surfaces shimmering over quirky homemade invention -- the logical midpoint between Steely Dan and R. Stevie Moore. (The latter connection is direct: Apples keyboardist John Ferguson, son of one of Moore's high-school bandmates, is a lifelong protege of New Jersey's lo-fi godfather.) But sonics aside, what makes Travellers In Space and Time the Apples' strongest album since 1997's Tone Soul Evolution is that bandleader Robert Schneider and company have crafted a consistently solid set of songs. The clever sonic touches are in service to ultra-catchy tunes with memorable choruses and smart, witty lyrics. The songs are so good, in fact, that when the Apples drop a pair of blatant homages to late '70s ELO near the end of the album ("Nobody But You" and "Wings Away"), it sounds like a thank you from one generation of pop craftsmen to another.