*** The Apples in Stereo

TONE SOUL EVOLUTION

(spinART)

It's no coincidence that this band named their home recording studio Pet Sounds. Awash in headphone harmonies and a smorgasbord of aural effects -- cuckoo clocks, crickets, clicking heels -- the Apples in Stereo are the brainchild of Robert Schneider, a singer/guitarist who writes the kind of wistful, daydreaming songs that bring to mind the pop brilliance of Brian Wilson, with melodies sweet as cotton candy and buoyant as a day at the fair.

On Tone Soul Evolution he does justice to those melodies by moving up from Pet Sounds to a 24-track commercial recording studio for the first time. The result is a bounty of hooks. Little ones. Big ones. Silver ones. Gold ones. A sunny chorus illuminates "Shine a Light"; an ominous guitar signature throws "Get There Fine" slightly off-kilter. And just when one of Schneider's soft-focus lullabies has your mind floating high among the clouds, the trip's over. Kind of like a good ferris-wheel ride. Or an old Brian Wilson song.

-- Jonathan Perry