Apples in Stereo

In our collective consciousness, the Elephant Six collective towers like a brilliantly ornamented obelisk. From that vaunted co-op came the most luminary music of the '90s, and though a few of its members are still active today, there is the pleasant sense when watching Apples in Stereo that they are emissaries from your own past, returned briefly from a time that is arrested and unspoilable and full of beautiful music. Apples frontman Robert Schneider, who was active in most of the principal Elephant Six bands, sports a discography that glows like a prayer candle to Brian Wilson and all things that glitter in our shared memory, and New Magnetic Wonder, the Apples' most recent full-length, is their most advanced, appealing work yet. Eschewing the Fisher Price aesthetic that marked their golden days, it's a record that, for the first time, seems as enthralled with the present and future as it is with the past. With Poison Control Center and Big Fresh. 21+.
Tue., July 22, 8 p.m., 2008