Rebels Eat Apples album Body Popular is a bit of a hidden gem. A multi-faceted pop soaked lowest fidelity high tone hilarious bobby sock crotch rot great time. Filled with simple songs that flow in that stupid smart way that the best garage punk revivalists straddle.

Body Popular sounds like something that Goner Records or P. Trash records would release, but the additional low-fi affection gives it too much pretense with the of inauthentic noise, purposefully blowing out vocals and drums to give it a “barely in-tune AM radio station” feel.

The songs are all pretty standard fare; presenting the three L’s of rock music life, love, loss but through a twisted, black comedy lens that calls to mind the comedy stylings of bands like The Cramps and those they influenced, but without the 50s Trash Culture fetishization. Yet to dismiss the songwriting of Rebels Eat Apples as a “joke” is to miss that there are some fantastic songs here.

Even the surreal “Tropical Pepperoni” which sounds like a combination of free association and lyric construction using exquisite corpse as tales of sad garbage collectors, lunch choices, and great men made of pepperoni is wrapped in a fantastic bouncy rhythm and a piano refrain but even this has some great writing “if it don’t mean nothing to anyone / how could it break your heart?”

Yet songs that should be depressing such as “Fat Man” with it’s cascading scales and tale of woe for the title character, there is a sense of hope and bravery in just continuing against adversity, both internal and external. As the song ends with “You’re mostly unstoppable, pretty unstoppable” that sounds like a pep talk to both the Fat Man and to the listener.

Even the “minor” songs such as “Oh, Goldie,” which calls to mind nostalgia songs that are perfect for summer, are well constructed and well written. “So Radical” lines “You could be so radical but you choose drama queen, you could be so radical but it’s just not in your genes.” It’s not profound and you won’t have a new religion, but the gravity and weight behind these silly simple songs is undeniable.

I don’t know a thing about this band. Their liner notes are near barren, as is their MySpace page and their record label has just a single paragraph about this release.

Who are they? There’s mention of an older release, but where is that? Who put it out? There’s no future show dates and requests for more info from the label went unanswered.

So let me try this, Rebels Eat Apples Body Popular is a great, great, GREAT rock n roll album if weighed down by the devotion to lo-fidelity recording techniques.

You can download it on a pay what you will basis from here. Download it. Summer’s coming and you need BBQ music. Here it is.

Category : album Review