Published on Jan 14, 2011
The energy carousing through Apteka’s music is contagious; this band has the fiery soul of some of the early post-hardcore acts. This band doesn’t make deliberate attempts to sound coercively ferocious. This is a sophisticated outfit that is loud, noisy, and heartfelt, but with never a bone so testy that would make it sound even remotely brackish.
The punkish rage of Apteka is often tempered with dreamy guitar layers that border on shoegazer, but they are always careful – though not self-consciously so – not to cross the line. But this doesn’t deter the group from taking total fearless plunges into the romantic, and creating haunting songs like “Edie Sees” and “If You Were Here.” However, whenever a band makes – like Apteka does here – invoking guitar-music, there is always an element of some lush dreaminess that follows the music like a shadow, the manifestations of which on a track like “Where You Sleep” is psychedelic, and on something like “Cicada Song,” is arousing and anthemic.
Apteka plays its layered guitar sounds like a purist rock band rather than a bunch of kids wanting to make beautiful, astral indie music. On cuts like “Indigenous” and “The Sheet” – the least pugnacious of the bunch, on which the band is not trying to be reflective – beneath the beauty of the misty music, one can feel the band playing the with ferocious intensity.
The noise made by Apteka is clean for most of the times, and on occasions, like on “Blackout Hearts,” takes on a cellophane glam sound. In this instance, however, the music is not grand; there is more of Sonic Youth than Silversun Pickups in this track. On “She Is Riots,” the same sound gets haughtier and sleazier, with guitar attacks that are way manlier and very ‘60s “rock n’ roll.”
Tour EP is a passionate and soulful rock gem.
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