Shopping the other day I saw a girl, probably about thirteen years old, stopping in her walk to try to catch falling snowflakes on her tongue. Utterly unselfconscious, she was simply enjoying herself, without a thought about pollution, what other people might think of her behavior, or whether in stopping where she did she might be blocking traffic in the parking lot. And I was struck by the notion that this might well be the last time a girl of her age would act in such a childlike, carefree manner; that soon she'd have been paralyzed by adolescence, terrified that anyone would see her acting like such a kid, or perhaps aware that the boys in her grade might begin to have inklings that tongues were useful for more than snowflake catching. I found myself thinking of an essay my friend Stewart wrote about the Pet Sounds box set, how pop music (as compared with, but related to, rock), more than almost any other genre, is comfortable with childhood. And I realized that this is probably one reason why "rock" fans and critics often look upon pop (I'd call it "power pop," but "power" is such a late-'70s, defensive, chest-thumping word) with such derision: rock is essentially adolescent - and there's nothing an adolescent hates more than to be reminded of the short distance separating adolescence from childhood. At its best, rock captures the energy and abandon, the restless questioning, the hunger for new sensation of adolescence, but at its worst, rock denies and deflects genuine emotion with grand gestures - defiance, swagger, accusation, hypersexuality, operatic gloom - rather than admit the possibility of vulnerability. (All of this might explain the unnerving fascination of too many rockers with the paraphernalia of fascism...) And yes, at its most cloying, pop threatens the other extreme of becoming positively infantile - no, we don't particularly want to watch grown adults play with their own half-digested food - but at its most sophisticated, it can both celebrate the wonder of childhood and reveal the stark agony, loss, and aloneness too often characteristic of those years. Which is probably why Brian Wilson, whose childhood was so harsh and brutal, could write songs as simultaneously beautiful and ineffably sad as "Caroline No" - or why Alex Chilton could write a genius song like "Thirteen," which captures the naivete, pathos, nascent joy, and desperately threatening loss of that age. It's no accident, then, that Chilton and Wilson loom demi-godlike in the pop cosmology. In a way, they're complementary: Chilton bringing a very adult sense of cynicism, darkness, even despair to the music; Wilson guarding his vulnerability by descending into nostalgia (and infantilism) at times, but more productively attempting to stave off depression through craft. And that craft is one of the most conspicuous aspects of the Apples' music. Tone Soul Evolution is full of songs that struck me, after only two or three listens, with a rush of familiarity - "oh, that song!" - as if I'd known them forever. What that craft allows, what makes it a necessity to good pop, is that it transmutes through a combinatory alchemy the naive joy of childhood with the energy of adolescence, producing wonder and bliss. And wonder and bliss are so much harder to achieve or convey convincingly than angst, gloom, or "darkness." The Apples on this disc mysteriously achieve a more colorful palette by subtraction. Despite being recorded on 24 tracks rather than the 8 tracks used to create their earlier recordings, Tone Soul Evolution chooses its parts carefully so that each stands out in its clarity, rather than blending together into a melange whose discrete ingredients aren't perceptible. "About Your Fame" is a good example: every part rings clear and distinct, vocal harmonies, sleighbells, slide guitar, ba-buh-buh backing vocals. Robert Schneider, who writes the Apples' material, is also responsible for the new release by the Marbles - really, Schneider's home recordings. They're not "demos," because they weren't intended as a calling card/resumé for the music industry. In fact, while the sound quality is quite good considering the circumstances of their recording, the songs are very insular, private. They seem almost more overheard than recorded - which is probably a carefully cultivated illusion. The songs themselves display Schneider's melodic and arranging gifts, but the predominance of high, tingly sounds like toy pianos, glockenspiels, sleighbells, and such, along with the sometimes sing-songy nature of the melodies, tilts the project a bit too close to the cloying end of things. But again, keep in mind that these were recordings produced for the sheer joy of it, which have only been released through fan demand, essentially. Not the place to start if you're interested in Schneider's music (that would be the Apples), but worth hearing if you're already a fan. The Orange Peels present a less varied surface than the Apples do, at least on first listen. The recordings are a bit more smooth: even in 24-track, Schneider's love for '60s sound keeps a bit of edge, a slightly off-balance feel, to the Apples' recordings, whereas the Peels seem a bit more fond of the more rounded, dryer '70s sound. The songs themselves are catchy, as pop should be - but the danger of sheer catchiness is that it works kind of like inoculation: past the initial exposure, more of the same becomes increasingly ineffective. The details here save these songs from that fate: the organ that finally emerges out of the background near the end of "Something Strange Happens," the Ringo-ized compression of the drum breaks in "All the World Could Pass Me By," the Felt-like guitar lead that rises above the minigolf windmill guitars chopping through "Something Strange Happens," the handclaps in the second chorus of "I Don't Mind the Rain"...well, I could continue like this with every track. The album's well-paced, too - in contrast with the bright melodies of most tracks on the disc, "Take Me Over" confines its melody to only one or two notes until the exuberant chorus. And just when you were ready to overdose on vocal harmonic candy, the singers shut up and let the band toss off the aptly title instrumental "Spaghetti-O Western," featuring pedal steel and surf/western reverbed guitar. Ultimately, these three recordings suggest something else about pop: it's at its best when its open attitude to childhood is tempered by a degree of adult sophistication, nuance, and cynicism. While these attitudes also produce a certain distance from emotion, they acknowledge it to a greater degree, perhaps, than rock's sometimes excessively anxious ways of warding off vulnerability. The danger for pop, though, is that in translating that sophistication, nuance, and cynicism into musical terms, through a measured sense of craft, a textured notion of popular musical history, and a sardonic lyrical wit, it can sometimes veer dangerously close to VH1 territory, in which sophistication etc. becomes everything, a glossy surface with nothing beneath. There's a reason "tasteful" and "mature" are words to be dreaded in both rock and pop criticism: they mark the sealing off of both childhood and adolescence, rather than the variously successful but necessary attempts of the best pop and rock to integrate those phases of life with adulthood. At its best, then, this is what pop can achieve, and both the Apples in stereo and the Orange Peels come pretty close to being pop at its best.

Artist
Album Title
Song Title