Two things seems to be pertinent about Apes’ latest release, Ghost Games – that it’s vocalist Brack Brunson’ first outing fronting this Washington, D.C. act, and that they’ve still got no guitars. The former seems important: Brunson doesn’ possess the bark of original singer Well, but why so much fuss over the latter? Is it a cardinal sin to be playing rock’n’roll without a six-stringed instrument, or is it still a novelty? Either way, Apes are more than capable of producing music without the need of a guitar. Erick Jackson’ primordial bass fuzz and Amanda Kleinman’ psychedlica-influenced keyboard lines make this more than a stoic, sludgy rhythmic affair.
I’m sure this is what Andrew Stockdale thinks Wolfmother sound like. Both Wolfmother and Apes eat from the same musical plate: early Led Zeppelin and Who records predominately, garnished with stoner record tendencies. Where the two acts diverge is in the execution of their chosen influences: while Wolfmother created some terrible derivate by aping “60s rock, Apes set about being noisy-as-fuck and then paring it back to something that sounds like a Death from Above 1979 song being covered by Liars.
There is something ostentatious about Ghost Games, a theatricality that brings to mind acid-fueled jamborees in the Wilderness Of No Return. It’s particularly palpable on the lumbering “Speech Reach’ and on “Dr Watcher’, a song with a particularly bad synthesised pan pipe line. This quirkiness hamstrings the band when it comes to finding a potential crossover audience, but when they don the black and go all garage rock like on the anarchic “G.R.F’ and the oddly traditional-sounding “Practice Hiding’, they could almost appeal to the wider musical populous.
There isn’ enough variety musically to make me gush superlatives about Ghost Games, but it’s nice not to hear a guitar on an album. Maybe it really is an important point in the end.
Dom Alessio
