Ivy's Apartment Life at 25: A Forgotten Album Gets A Second Life
Plus the "claxonomy" of traffic, a reader poll, and the beautiful collision of aviation & music
Good Morning!
Welcome to the 5th issue of Liner Notes for 2023. Liner Notes is a paid segment of On Repeat.
If you’re curious to see what’s inside, you can visit here and check out everything I’ve written lately. If you’d like to support On Repeat, the best ways to do that are by taking out a subscription and/or sharing this (or any other) post.
1997 seems like a lifetime ago, and in many ways, it was.
I didn’t know it then, but I spent that summer almost as a last hurrah; lots of road trips to nowhere around the west and a great swing through most of New England & the Mid-Atlantic.
It was a very specific moment before coming home and starting a job I thought I’d only have for a couple of years while figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up.
Twenty-five years later, I still haven’t decided.
While I was bombing up and down I-95 that summer, Ivy was putting together the final touches on their Apartment Life record.
A follow-up to 1995’s Realistic, the trio of Andy Chase, Adam Schlesinger, and Dominique Durand didn’t know it then, but they were putting together what many would consider their best record.
College rock snobs over the age of 30, get ready to feel old! Ivy’s 1997 opus Apartment Life just got reissued by Bar/None Records for its 25th anniversary, in digital and—for the first time—on LP. For everyone else, consider this a long overdue introduction to one of the most crucial, yet chronically overlooked, power pop records of the late ’90s.
Combining Schelsigner’s ear for a hook, Chase’s economical style of play, and Durand’s voice, they released something easy on the ear and hard to categorize.
Was it Indie? Dream pop? Shoegaze? Power pop? The correct answer is “yes.”
Durand’s voice asked us to float off into the clouds while Chase and Schelsinger’s tight rhythm kept our feet on the ground. There is also a touch of Ye Ye here—Durand is French, after all—but while that often felt like empty calories, Apartment Life is anything but. Rare is the record that balances sounding light while also substantive. Modern but classic. Tracks like “I Get the Message” and “Get Out of the City” manage to sound as new today as they did in 1997.
Saint Etienne does this really well. On Apartment Life, so does Ivy.
The band members went on to score several films. Schlesinger, of course, had another band and unfortunately became an early victim of COVID-19 in 2020.
As they were mourning, the remaining Chase and Durand began rooting through their demos and other work. That, coupled with years of fan requests, convinced them to reissue the album- this time on vinyl finally.
Last fall, to mark 25 years at work, I got a cake1. To mark it's 25th anniversary, Apartment Life is getting reissued on vinyl. One has a lot of empty calories. The other does not. Both will leave you feeling great, but Ivy's sugar rush will outlast any dessert.
Apartment Life is a classic record that sounds very much like that specific moment in music, even if Ivy didn't know it then.
Bottom Line: Sometimes reissues or a nonstop timeline of “on this day” tweets can feel like a gut punch- after all, time never really slows down. But sometimes, it can feel great and take you back to a very specific place & time.
With its polished sound and lush vocals, Apartment Life will do just that for you. Have a good trip.
For your playlist: I Get The Message, Get Out of the City
Further listening:
Friends of On Repeat Keith R. Higgons and Rob Janicke spoke with Chase & Durand last summer for the Abandoned Albums podcast. Click here to check out the discussion.
B-Sides:
We lost Glen “Spot” Lockett this week. Spot was the in-house engineer producer for SST records, and had a big hand in making a bunch of your favorite records. If you have a pick, share it below. For me, it’s hard to top Husker Du’s “New Day Rising.”
In any music moment, for every frontman or iconic logo there are dozens of people behind the scenes making it all happen. Spot was one of them. A friend of mine described him as “one of the keys to a notorious time in music revolution.” I can’t think of a more apt description than that. RIP.
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As many of you know, the job I mentioned above is working for an airline. And as some of you might know, I’m a shameless AvGeek. And it turns out there’s a mural at the New Orleans airport featuring 100 artists/musicians.
This is my kinda Venn diagram.
The airport’s full name is Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (Moisant Field), which is both named after this guy and a mouthful.
If you have passed through the terminal and seen this mural, please share your thoughts!
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With AI seeming to take over every other discussion, it was only a matter of time before it crept into the music world. Touching on everything from Clyde Stubblefield’s funky drummer to raves, this is a really interesting read on what drum machines can teach us about our new robotic overlords and how we can avoid what the article terms “shitty automation.”
Without some dynamics, harmonic interest or psychoactive stimulants, the comfort of repetitive beats quickly becomes boring. A rhythm also needs elements of tension or surprise. We call the placing of a beat where the ear doesn’t expect it ‘syncopation’. (In the late 19th-century United States, it was called ‘ragging’, giving ragtime its name.) Variations within and between bars take listeners and dancers to new places. James Brown was known for rigidly enforcing his band’s parts, but each bar that Clyde Stubblefield plays in ‘Funky Drummer’ is subtly different from the one preceding it.
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Maybe it’s just me, but it took years for me to realize that at their core, Duran Duran are really talented musicians (whether you like the music they make is always up for debate- that’s what the comment section is for!).
The lyrics might’ve been designed to fit into the song’s structure (Exhibit A: Strut on a line/ it's discord and rhyme), but that doesn’t take away from the fact that these guys can play.
Sure, the album is long on style and short in substance. It’s the album equivalent of cotton candy. It’s all flash and fluff and “cherry ice cream smiles”, and doesn’t have a damn thing to say other than “shake your butt”. It has nothing to say to your brain – but plenty to say to the rest of your nervous system. The album has a remarkable energy – you can’t sit still listening to it – and such an engaging sound that I’m willing to overlook its utter vapidity. It is sonically sumptuous, enigmatic, charming, and so damn irresistible I’m willing to let the album whisper its sweet nothings in my ear all day long.
Energetic & escapist? You bet. If ever there was a message in their songs, it was “have fun.” At any rate, this page often delivers some pretty brutal reviews, but this isn’t one of ‘em. Rio gets 10/10, and I’m not sure I can argue that.
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Growing up in Portland gave me a love of many things- and a hatred for traffic. That’s not hyperbole; when we finally shopped for a first house here in Madison, one of the prerequisites was “good schools” (our oldest was a toddler then). The other was “less than 10 minutes from my work.”
Driving in a big city can be a bloodsport, and while I don’t miss it, I also kinda miss it. It helps that it’s not something I have to endure every day, but there’s is something very satisfying bout the sensory overload that comes with navigating it all. The sights, the feel (road pavement, concrete, etc.), the sounds (people yelling in gridlock, the sound of the light rail whizzing by as you sit there, the concrete again). And, of course, the horns. Always the horns.
So I found this article about the sounds, er, claxonomy of Mexico City’s traffic fascinating. It’s a little off menu, but I think something most of us can relate to.
When I bring up street sounds with my friends, we invariably begin listing all we can, often reaching 15 or 20 unique sounds that can be heard on Mexico City’s streets on any given day. We can add to this the symphony of expressive honks that echo along the city’s brimming streets. With the thickening traffic, the sound of the street increases exponentially, each new car adding to the din while demanding auditory escalation from other motorists. Although the traffic might be stationary, its sound will still travel, overflowing the streets to amble through parks, markets, and the most buffered corners of the city’s apartments. Even if you’re not on Mexico City’s streets, you never really leave them.
Cut out bin:
From the department of lists: All 165 Pink Floyd songs, ranked from worst to first. Who ya got? I’ll only say that I think “Take It Back” deserves to be a lot higher than #114.
Reader Poll:
I’ve left out my previous week’s listening list the last few weeks. Is this something you’ve missed? Couldn’t care less about? Never noticed?
Sound off below:
A good tweet:
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
Okay, it was really good, but still…
A whole Adam Schlesinger band I’ve never heard of? He was prolific as hell.
Thanks for putting this reissue on my radar. Absolutely loving it and let's you know that no one can do 1997 like 1997 could.