Apes

Raw rock grooves, chant-based "vocal scraps," heroic doses of organ-soaked psychedelia: Such are the trappings of Apes. The quixotic Washington, D.C., quartet has spent the last five years plumbing the murky swamp land bordered by Les Savy Fav, early Deep Purple and Rembrandt Pussyhorse-era Butthole Surfers. The result, as evidenced...

By Jason Heller

April 21, 2005

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Raw rock grooves, chant-based "vocal scraps," heroic doses of organ-soaked psychedelia: Such are the trappings of Apes. The quixotic Washington, D.C., quartet has spent the last five years plumbing the murky swamp land bordered by Les Savy Fav, early Deep Purple and Rembrandt Pussyhorse-era Butthole Surfers. The result, as evidenced on the group's new full-length, Baba's Mountain, is a hummable conundrum smeared with funhouse smiles and syrupy surreality. Whirling around the stoner-baroque key-tickling of Amanda Kleinman and the febrile yelps of Paul Weil, the disc appears to be some sort of self-help concept album outlining enlightenment via the ascension of its titular geography: an ontologically treacherous terrain where this species of dope-addled Ape reigns supreme. The act plays this Friday at Rock Island alongside Food for Animals, Manhunter and fellow capitol-dwellers Q and Not U. Whether your tastes run to the mystic, the lysergic or the strictly comedic, Apes is primate-time entertainment.

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