Ape School’s Junior Violence can’t decide what album it’s going to be. It takes on several different genres during its eleven tracks. At first, it’s a bit Apple-ad hipster – the deeply ironic sense of jubilance on opener “A New Low! It Sucks Itself!” would fit well next to The Envy Corps and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on a Fuck Yeah, Denim! playlist – but then grows into this gorgeous sort of acid-beach record – what Surfer Blood might have made with a bit more adventurousness and lot more pot. Also, it’s briefly as unabashedly direct as an old Wilco b-side before things start getting distinctly darker, and then it’s bright once more for a last hurrah. Junior Violence sounds like it could hang with different, albeit pretty elite peers at various times, and for good reason. It is this way because mastermind Michael Johnson knows what he wants it to be.
With about decade of music making, a rotating door of collaborators, and a list of influences that covers everything from Prefab Sprout to Van Halen to Scott Walker, it seems Johnson’s project has resulted in a band less dedicated towards a singular artistic vision so much as they’re dedicated to the integrity of their songs. When Junior Violence switches up on a dime, it admittedly jars momentum, but in the act, Ape School chooses to not be pigeonholed, and a vision begins to form a picture of a band that would not have their songs any other way. It’s easy to imagine how another act might have just clothed everything in warm reverb to make the album feel more continuous, but with the way these songs are, such a choice would’ve been superfluous and distracting. It’s enough that a track like “Ready For Duty” owns what it’s doing – a decidedly open folk-twang – that it needs not sonically connect to the drug haze of its preceding front-side.
Johnson consistently evokes a sense of weight, lending it to foggy fuzz, synth-phase Bowie homage, and British-schoolboy sneer-punk alike. This means that Junior Violence, even if it calls up a variety of references, never feels like a compilation of several bands. It is by Ape School, a band whose deep love of music and the ability to evoke unease, tension, and heart ties the whole smorgasbord together. You can purchase Junior Violence via Hometapes Records. – Adam Downer