Word: soulfulness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Beatles' best, transcend their short length and pull you into the music. Many of these tracks will stay in your head, leaving you humming the chorus on your way to class, annoying passers-by. So what's the problem? The problem is that there is no problem: Tone Soul Evolution is a fine CD, without any real weaknesses, but it lacks the spark, innovation and contrast that mark great albums from the simply decent. Chances are that years from now, more often than not, it will lose out to the White Album or Abbey Road...
...times, the Beatles resemblance becomes almost too much to handle. "We'll Come to Be" sounds like it's a lost track from Rubber Soul and "Coda" is right off Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band. Lead singer Schneider's voice is eerily like a combination of Lennon and McCartney. Songs like "Find Our Way" use muted horn and string parts a la Beatles classics such as "Got to Get You Into My Life." Let us not forget that Apple was the name of the Beatles' record company. Coincidence? You make the call. But the Beatles aren...
Lyrically, Tone Soul Evolution deals with the timeless topics of pop music: love, doubt, betrayal, hope--in other words, the usual. The only difference is that, as befits the '90s, the subjects of songs are often fairly ambiguous. "Seems So" details the story of an eerie night-time UFO-ish episode, without revealing much of what actually happened. "Find Our Way" mentions a relationship and its past, but doesn't allow the listener to find out anything other than "Maybe we'll find our way." But Schneider's sardonic, often ambiguous, delivery allows potential cheese-o lines like "Headed home...
...real question is, when would you listen to Tone Soul Evolution? The answer, of course, is after you've listened to Revolver for the umpteenth time, once again damned Yoko Ono and Wings and cursed God that the Beatles ever broke up. Oasis, look out. With the release of Tone Soul Evolution, Apples In Stereo has the leg up in the Beatles sound-alike competition...
...beginning of "Apple Tree," she coos, "I can't control the soul flowin' in me," going on to prove it with scat refrains culminating in a call-and-response exchange with the audience. In "Apple Tree" as well as throughout Live, Badu lets her Southern accent creep beautifully into her phrasing, turning a there into "thur" and a can't into a lingering "caint...