PC Music founder A. G. Cook settled on Apple as an album title, he says, because the word evokes so many things: the eponymous tech company (which, historically, has been regarded as the opposite of the Windows-based personal computer, or “PC”); the Beatles’ record label, where the group could stretch their legs and play with genre; the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Eve’s indulgence from the tree of knowledge is an apt metaphor for Cook’s output. Like most things with Cook’s name on it, Apple—his second album this year, following last month’s 7G, a seven-disc collection of sketches and experiments—is a staggering and potent amalgamation of numerous genre influences, but it also has moments of information overload, where its boundarylessness becomes too much.
The crunchy slow jam “Lifeline” makes a strong case for Cook’s alchemical formula. He imbues pop-punk earnestness with the sweeping scope of an ’80s power ballad, an elemental pairing that could easily be saccharine or cloying, and then offsets them with static and mutating vocals, idiosyncratic touches that keep Cook straddling the fence between full-on pop and genre-agnostic experimentalism. “Beautiful Superstar” similarly displays a kind of softness that, on an intuitive level, is almost nauseating. Yet it is so devoid of irony, sincere in its performance, and tight in its production that it becomes irresistible.
Cook’s cerebral schmaltz comes into sharp relief on the album’s brassier songs. “Xxoplex” has harsh Eurodance elements and PC Music’s signature chipmunk whoops, while the maudlin “Animals” sounds like it could have come from Kanye’s Yeezus moodboard. The polarity apparent at each turn on Apple shows how deftly Cook sees the underlying kinships between disparate sounds and makes them work harmoniously together. “Haunted” is probably the best example: Restrained acoustic guitar morphs into synthy Siren calls that sound almost like emergency sirens by the end. But if these formal tricks are meant to be thought-provoking, some of those thoughts boil down to, Wait, why is this happening?
This could also just be PC Music’s curse. Long pegged as the future of pop, they’ve been around for almost a decade, yet their work still urges deconstruction, which raises the question: Are we there yet?
But Cook and PC Music have long banked on pop’s ineffability. The style has no dependable definition, Cook recently told the New York Times, beyond “packaging it to be approachable or consumable.” Today, the form is more amorphous than ever: Late rappers like Lil Peep and Juice WRLD were more avid students of pop-punk than your average 2005 high-school garage band, and artists like Deb Never and Billie Eilish embrace a singer-songwriter ethos while traversing in contemporary rap themes and melodies. Genrelessness abounds, but Cook’s music has nothing to do with restoring the monoculture. His work is confounding and sometimes irritating, but totally singular to his mind. This can’t be the future of pop; no one else could do what he does, even if they tried.
Buy: Rough Trade
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.
