Shall Noise Upon

Apollo Sunshine | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 2, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Headless Heroes
• ASIN: B000FUIV38
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,248 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Breeze

2. Singing to the Earth (To Thank Her for You)

3. 666: The Coming of the New World Government

4. Brotherhood of Death

5. Happiness

6. We Are Born When We Die

7. The Funky Chamberlain (Who Begot Who)

8. Money

9. The Mermaid Angeline

10. Green Green Lawns of Outer Space

11. Honestly

12. Fog and Shadow

13. Light of the World

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The way I long to touch you, September 4, 2008

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shall Noise Upon (Audio CD)

The Apollo Sunshine have always dabbled in Elephant 6-style psychedelica and sparkling pop melodies, but they've outdone themselves with "Shall Noise Upon."

In particular, their third full-length album is a concept album about spirituality's effect, so they have plenty of material to build on. But they wrap it in a canvas of outrageously loopy sound -- we've got a mishmash of jazz, soul, psychedelic pop and pastoral folk, and it's all splattered with an experimental edge that practically tears off the ear.

"The surface of streams/the fingers of trees/the sweet harmonies/in the breeze...." Sam Cohen sings over a pendulous melody of guitar, rippling harp and trickling piano. As a warmup, he continues singing the praises of nature, and describing it as being "the way I long to touch you."

It's followed by the bouncy acoustic folk of "Singing To The Earth (To Thank Her For You)," the blistering psychedelica of "666: The Coming Of The New World Government," and an all-too brief titular interlude which is basically blips, creaks, and eruptions of electric guitar that sounds like it's trying to possess you. Think a hard-rock reincarnation of the Olivia Tremor Control.

From there they drift through songs in that vein -- delicate folk-pop melodies, countryish ballads, bouncy psychpop, quirky acid-jazzy songs, and a Mexican flavoured pop tune. But there are also songs that go way, way over to the weird side -- warbling strings filled with hymnlike vocals, spacey psychedelic Hawaiian folk.

And there's the eerie "Light Of The World" finale. It's all thunder, strings and dawnlike buildup... followed by silence... and finally finishing with a weird lo-fi brainwashing message. Don't know what that's all about.

"Shall Noise Upon" was apparently recorded in a "house inhabited by spirits" in the Catskills mountains, and there are moments where you can believe that a few of those spirits wangled into a microphone. Then again, there are moments that suggest it was recorded in a beach-house after a sunset party, where somebody was impaled in an electric guitar. Who knows?

Either way, the Apollo Sunshine manages to have it both ways in this album -- they continue to deliver ripe psychedelic pop, but also polish their wild weird experimental eruptions. Lots of acoustic and electric guitars, violin, banjo, brassy trumpets, piano and harp, but also trickling keyboard, explosions of steel guitar, bells and a delicate flute. And they're able to twist normal instrumentation into strange unpredictable shapes, be it an exquisite swell of strings or a hallucinatory burping eruption of screeching guitar.

Sam Cohen rides these songs out to the end, usually sounding like a long-lost Beatle, but channelling Lou Reed occasionally. And he's all too happy to wallow in the lyrics of pastoral love odes and daydreams of a money-free world ("I know I would lose my job/and I would find the time/to do all those things/I've always wanted to do but never had the money..."). At best it's thought-provoking, at worst vaguely incomprehensible and a bit cliched.

"Shall Noise Upon" polishes everything about the Apollo Sunshine, and takes their wild experimental psychedelica and endearing folkpop further into the stratosphere. Change is coming!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars worth waiting for, September 18, 2008

By 

Diane Espindle "Diane Espindle" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shall Noise Upon (Audio CD)

I have been a fan of Apollo Sunshine since it's conception.I loved "Conscious Pilot" from the KATONAH album and "YOU AND I" from the PINK album, but this new CD "SHALL NOISE UPON" exceeds all my expectations! This is a musician's mecca and a listener's jewel. The more you listen the more you "get it"!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blow Your Mind!, August 5, 2008

By 

The Passenger - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shall Noise Upon (2LPs w/bonus CD) [Vinyl] (Vinyl)

Apollo Sunshine blends '60s psychedelic folk with the arena rock hugeness of the '70s and the lo-fi noise pop aesthetics of '90s groups like My Bloody Valentine or the Olivia Tremor Control.

The cover art for the Boston, Mass.-based trio's third record, Shall Noise Upon, depicts a Jackson Pollock-like, color-splattered globe surrounded by constellations of religious and spiritual icons from every corner of the earth. The image suggests the record somehow takes the disparate cultures of a large world and unifies them into a single, genre-breaking, stargazing album. It may seem like an impossibly lofty goal, but the songs deliver.


The LP w/bonus CD is also a big plus as you get the beauty of the LP art and the warmth of the music on vinyl, with a CD version of the album that you can pop in your car stereo or rip onto your iPod.