awrc@lfcs.edinburgh.ac.uk (Al Crawford) (06/14/91)
The Apples - Beautiful People CD single - Epic 6368942 4 tracks Total Running Time 18 min 15 sec 1. Beautiful People (The 7" Mix) 2. Beautiful People (Stereo Guitar People Mix) 3. Lovesidedownaround 4. Beautiful People This is the second single from Edinburgh "supergroup" The Apples, which contains members of top defunct capital city groups Win, Syndicate and Hey! Elastica. It's in a similar vein to their first single "Eye Wonder" - rhythmic dance music with guitars sounding as though it came from somewhere south of Edinburgh, somewhere not a million miles from Manchester. The last single alternately soothed and saddened me - it was sad to see members of a group as good as Win doing derivative indie dance, liberally sprinkled with cliched James Brown samples. In it's favour though, it had to be said that as indie dance went it was quite good and there were hints of the much missed Win sound hiding under the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa, flares and silly haircuts. This one also shows a few too many signs of jumping on the indie dance/ 60s revival bandwagon (rather stupidly, since the aforementioned bandwagon is slowing rapidly). The "C'mon beautiful people, where is the love you bring?" refrain is pseudo-hippy garbage at it's worst. However there's more in the way of redeeming features than before - female backing vocalist Samantha is rather less shrill, Callum McNair's vocals are periodically given the fuzzy Trent Reznor treatment which, while not exactly original, is kinda interesting and (most importantly for me) the Win sound is stamped all over this one. McNair manages to reproduce the whiny Win guitar sound reasonably well and Ian Stoddart and/or Willy Perry riddle the track with familiar keyboard hooks, the whole track culminating in a chaotic, noisy mess that has late-era "WIN" printed on it in big, dayglo letters. The Stereo Guitar People Mix is pretty much as described - liberally spattered with soaring guitars that swing back and forth across the stereo image. Lovesidedownaround is a more downbeat house-ish track built on a keyboard bassline, the obligatory beat and an odd little sampled Samantha vocal. Pleasant enough, but nothing to write home about. -- Al Crawford - Al_Crawford@edinburgh.ac.uk "Click Click Drone"