It happens all the time: Perhaps feeling trapped by the constraints of his successful full-time band, a frontperson/main songwriter forms a side project or records a solo record. These efforts are often stylistic tangents, and while they can painfully suck-- proving that a good band is more than the sum of parts-- it's occasionally exciting to hear that songwriter's voice in a different context.
That's not true here. Marbles was Robert Schneider's original recording moniker before he formed the Apples in Stereo, cranking out sloppy-but-charming four-track Beach Boys tributes that were compiled for 1997's Pyramid Landing and Other Favorites. Expo, however, is a planned and calculated Marbles full-length, recorded in the same room as Pet Sounds was, and mixed by the same engineer as Brian Wilson's revived Smile (Cello Studios and Mark Linnett, respectively). But instead of the Smile-stalking you'd expect from a guy who is known to have obsessively studied Wilson's studio techniques, Expo sounds like ELO via Gary Numan, with anachronistic electronic embellishments applied to inoffensive lite-FM melodies.
While criticising the leader of the Apples in Stereo for sounding "cartoonish" would be ridiculous, his typically quirkly affectations are unbearable here, outside their usual rock context. "Out of Zone" has simple guitar lines and sheets of electronic drums and effects, over which Schneider harmonizes with himself on a breezy melody. It's characterized by meaningless lyrics that seem to exist only for the sake of rhyming, overbearing vocal effects, and outmoded production gimmicks. And this is one of Expo's catchiest songs.
Elsewhere, "Jewel of India"-- one of the record's three instrumental pieces-- was probably meant to evoke foreign landscapes, but its horn melody sounds more like a Casio PT-10. That and the blissed-out nature boy anthem "Hello Sun" sound like incidental music from Cannibal: The Musical without the intended humor. Later songs like "Cruel Sound" aren't as cluttered, but recall B-sides from the Apples' later work. At least this album is brief.
