Apache Dropout are drenched in retro signifiers. They took their name from a song by 1970s Brit group the Edgar Broughton Band and covered 1910 Fruitgum Company, their album art resembles classic poster styles, and their music bleeds history with its fuzzy garage riffs, cardboard-box beats, crackly movie-dialogue samples, and the Roky Erickson-worthy yelps of rubber-voiced singer Sonny Blood. It’s almost too perfect that the Indiana trio called their last album Bubblegum Graveyard and adorned it with a Tales From the Crypt-style zombie cartoon–their music often sounds like '60s DIY pop rising from its own ashes.
Yet unlike a lot of retro-styled groups, there’s not much nostalgia going in Apache Dropout’s music. Their simple tunes and the earnest way they bash them out suggest they see the past not as an escape, but a source of fuel. They tap into the gut-level immediacy of garage rock in order to make their music sound present. In this way, they share a sensibility with the many retro-tinted groups Ian Svenonius has fronted, but without his sly commentary. Where Make-Up or Chain and the Gang are often winking, Apache Dropout stare straight ahead.
Immediacy is the most distinguishing characteristic of their third album, Heavy Window. Their 2011 self-titled debut was a bit more primitive, and *Bubblegum Graveyard *perhaps had sharper songs—but Apache Dropout has never sounded as fiery as they do in these 11 tracks spread across a hectic 34 minutes. They open with Blood's trademark screech, and from then on rarely stop to breathe, chugging and churning through every three-chord cycle and one-two stomp like they have a curfew. The speed varies, but the urgency is constant, and the sound is more combustible now too: Blood’s sandpaper guitar and Anu Nath's fur-lined bass rub together like kindling, shooting off sparks at every turn.
That combination lights up so often that it threatens to immolate the album; “Tired Old Story” actually descends into pure fuzz, burying drums and vocals beneath a wall of flame. But Apache Dropout follow that with their snappiest tune, “Crystal Ball”, feeding off of Lord Frye’s two-slap drumming and a flourish of acoustic strums. Finding those kind of momentum shifts inside such a well-defined sound makes *Heavy Window *more than a one-shot energizer. Garage rock records often lose their juice after repeat plays like, well, overchewed bubblegum. But Apache Dropout know how to find new paths even while sprinting. You won’t hear anything besides garage here, but inside those confines you’ll hear a lot.
Still, nothing Apache Dropout does is likely to convert the garage-averse. But the funny thing is, when Heavy Window’s playing, I’m not thinking this is great garage rock–I’m just thinking it’s great music, and that jibes with Apache Dropout’s smart take on the past. They use it for what they need rather than getting lost in it for its own sake, making music that points to itself more than its influences. Some retro-sounding records are good examples of a time or a sound, but *Heavy Window *is a lot more direct than that.
