Imagine a scenario: The head honchos of the music industry are sitting down to a healthy breakfast of coffee, croissants and cigarettes when they decide that what is really lacking is not another reality TV/X Factor style programme, but a gritty soap set around the ins and outs of the music industry. They look for a series of bands to base the soap around. With tales of feuds, fallouts, inept record labels, endless touring, loss of sleep, money and sanity, the fortunes and misfortunes of Apes, Pigs and Spacemen (APS) would certainly be appropriate.
So after 12 years a few different line ups and various day jobs, APS are back with a new EP ‘Simple Simian’ Opener ‘The Best Thing’ is snappy piece of soft rock. Dotted and dashed with high pitched synth, it is wholly what you would expect from this style of song - not quite living it up to its name. ‘The Wrong Pill’ is a tortured rockier ballad, Miro’ harassed voice informs ‘Happy when the chips are up, you can count me out til that’s the way’
Whereas ‘The Best Thing’ only experimented with the tiny vial of synth, ‘Bored Of Everything’ throws in an entire bottle. Showing a blatant disregard for the rules of chemistry the band have also stirred up the soft rock mixture blending it with trip hop scratchy noises, heavier drums and a sci-fi sound effects CD. Miro’s voice sounds more agitated but the chorus lets the song down going back to a safer Bon Jovi style song.
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‘So What If I’ is softer, sounding like another Bon Jovi ballad mixed with a lackluster Chilli Pepper song.
The blurb that accompanies this EP, claims ‘It feels fresh…yet familiar, as every classic should.” I have so say I identify more with the familiar comment. The EP is a fine piece of soft rock and would have gone down very well at a time when the likes of either Nickelback or Bon Jovi were the big hitters. But today this style just doesn’t sound fresh. The songs are good and the EP is quite listenable to but fresh – I think not.
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