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I feel lucky that I met Sam and Jesse. I've never connected musically with anyone else in my life like I have with the two of them, and they probably feel the same way. We have some sort of psychic thing together. We trust each other musically. -Jeremy Black |
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"We're like brothers at this point. Musically, right from the beginning, we've always been able to jump to the next shit without even thinking about it or talking to each other," says Gallagher, highlighting their facility for adapting to sudden nuances and shifts. "When I'm just fucking around on the keyboard and Sam is playing bass, we'll take it pretty far out there and I won't even think how long I'm playing or how far we're going. We never take it so far out that it gets stupid. Someone always knows to cut this shit out and pull it back in [laughs]. None of us came from a jamming mentality, so on the jams we do we still think we're these punk rock, noise people. If you see pictures of us in high school, Sam and I had white hair with huge spikes and Jeremy was in a band called The Snots. Seriously, what we listened to were these one-and-a-half minute long punk songs. When Apollo Sunshine first formed we played raw like the early Who records, a variant on quick, tight punk stuff."
For God And Country
 Jesse Gallagher by David Licht |
"The most conversationally confrontational comment I ever got about our band was when we released our second record, this girl said, 'You guys write a lot about God. Are you religious?' We never make a point of doing it but once we start on one or two titles it lets the person looking at the album cover have some insight, some little bit more, before you've even heard it. I like songs that have titles that aren't in the song or redirect the meaning of what's going on," Cohen says, though, in fairness, it's easy to see how someone could assume some sort of religious agenda with titles like "666: The Coming of the New World Government" or the vaguely evangelical sounding "We Are Born When We Die." These are titles that jump out at you. "Well, I'm glad they do," chuckles Cohen. "The title '666' came completely separately from the song, and it doesn't really share meaning as sentiment with the title. But, I'm gonna keep the mystery of that title."
Mystery is essential to Apollo Sunshine. There's nice layers of shadow and ambivalence to what they do, both in the studio and live, but one generally feels they know what they're doing, hand firm on the rudder of their wondrous boat ride.
"I do feel there's a lot of music that's made where there's people there constantly reminding them, 'People are lazy. Don't give 'em too much. Make sure it fits their lazy listening tendencies,' or, 'Don't worry about the tone of that. They're going to be listening to it on their phone. Let's just move out. Time is money!' I used to be more optimistic or naïve because I thought a lot more lame stuff got made because people just didn't have good ideas. That's part of it but there's more to it. I think I would puke if I was in that kind of session," laments Cohen. "This kind of thing happened in the '50s and '60s but it was more charming and romantic [laughs]. Like Colonel Tom mumbling, 'This is gonna work great with the kids!'"
 Apollo Sunshine |
They are quick to point out that despite titles like "Lord, "God" and "Light of the World" there's no overt agenda to their skyward wondering.
"We're never trying to get those Jew bastards to be a Catholic, or the other way around [laughs]. We all got together and latched onto the same spiritual beliefs without really talking about it," Gallagher says. "It kind of follows around our name, Apollo Sunshine. You can take it pretty far. We'll be able to continue to create and find new things to write about under this name. There's so much out there in the heavenly bodies. We haven't even dealt with getting into outer space yet!"
"Making [Shall Noise Upon] we realized how American a band we are. We'd never been to another country before this past summer, when we went to Europe," continues Gallagher. "We realized we had a really good pulse on American culture and where the politicians are taking us and what we were founded on; that's what some of the shit on the new cover is about. Some of the people steering this country are on a weird trip lining up with like sun worship and other occult beliefs. There's a lot of mystery groups and handshake societies running things."
According to Wikipedia, their latest album was recorded next door to the original Uncle Sam cabin.
"That's what we're told," says Cohen. "I wouldn't call it a cabin though. It's a stately, old manor. They claim it was the home of Sam Wilson, who was supposedly the model/template for Uncle Sam. Also James Madison was married in that house. We were buried in the heart of history [laughs]. There's a pirate themed bar in the basement of that house, and I spent some time there."
It is worth adding emphasis to Gallagher's enthusiasm for their band's name, one of the most evocative bits of doggerel poetry ever, two words that tap into prophecy, medicine, healing, the harvest and much more. What's surprising is how their music possesses many of these traits. Spin "Money" or "Today Is The Day" and you simply throw your cares to the wind, reborn if only for a few minutes. .
"I feel glad we chose this name. It continues to be something to live up to rather than play down. That's a very useful thing when you've been a band for seven years," says Cohen. "Possessing some of these characteristics may explain why we aren't the biggest band in the world. But we ask ourselves on a daily basis, 'Why are we doing this?' And the answer is never, 'To get money! To get big!' We're just trying to make something that will last."
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