Apollo Ghosts

Apollo Ghosts “Ghost, Get Out Of My Apartment”

Though it comes as no surprise that a song about a guy bitching out a passive-aggressive, voyeuristic apparition would be more than a little goofy, it is something of a revelation that it would also be quite tender and moving. Even when paired with a sad, creaky guitar part that sounds as though it was lifted from some almost-familiar record from 50 years ago, the singer’s silliness on the verses doesn’t quite prepare you for the sweetness and aching sincerity in his voice on the chorus, which soars just when you expect him to go flat and understated. The genuine, slightly pained emoting opens the song up a bit, and draws out its subtext — sure, he could be going for the literal here, but it seems a bit more plausible that the ghosts haunting the singer are more along the lines of unpleasant memories and emotional baggage from his past.

Listen to the entire album on the MBV site, and then buy it directly from the band. - Fluxblog

Yet another debt of gratitude out to David B. for giving me a new song to put on repeat all day– a song that’ll hopefully tide me over while I wait for the full-length to arrive.

It comes from Vancouver’s Apollo Ghosts, who just put out their debut LP, Hastings Sunrise, in an edition of 300 on vinyl. This is one of those I times when I innocently opened up my browser, and the next thing I knew, I was slapped across the face with something great that I immediately couldn’t stop listening to. I played this track 2 or 3 times, was immediately compelled to order the album, and am now streaming the tracks on the Apollo Ghosts Myspace like a mothereffer. I love this. - Catbirdseat

by Ben Lai

“I love our name, even though I didn’t know what it means until now,” bassist Jay Oliver candidly admitted. The name of his band, Apollo Ghosts, originated from a music venue in Thunder Bay called the Apollo Bar and Restaurant, a friendly, popular stop for many travelling bands on route between Winnipeg and Toronto.
“When I was touring with the Winks across Canada in 2006, they let us stay in these apartments [above the Apollo Bar,] and we each got our own giant room,” guitarist Adrian Teacher clarified. “I remember going to bed and just being really scared. I felt like there was a ghostly presence in there. I had a notebook and just wrote down Apollo Ghosts. I liked the sound of that.”
The first thing most people notice at an Apollo Ghosts show is the outrageous amount of charisma and energy Teacher delivers song after song. During a Jan. 18 show at Our Town Café he jumped off the stage, danced with the crowd and then ran outside into the streets singing. His equal dose of confidence and humour on stage has fans comparing him to the likes of Jonathan Richman and Nardwuar the Human Serviette. Off the stage however, Teacher’s personality is the polar opposite—surprisingly quiet, soft-spoken and introspective. “I get really excited to play music,” Teacher explained. “You are up in front of an audience and I feel it is important to engage them. And there is a certain way to engage people. We’re just having fun.”
“Adrian is more of a stage performer,” said drummer Amanda Panda. “[Adrian and I] used to teach in Korea and some days I’ll be looking over into his classroom and I see him running his hands through his hair, waving his arms around, singing and playing his guitar. I think a lot of the other teachers in school would get annoyed because he put a lot more efforts into his lessons. He wants to put on a show for the kids.”
Apollo Ghosts’ recent debut album, Hastings Sunrise, is a vinyl-only release (it comes with an MP3 download card) and can be purchased for the ridiculously low price of five dollars. “A lot of people laugh at that idea, kind of make fun of me, but I think it has worked out really well,” Teacher laughed. “A lot of people will take a chance on it. You know, what’s five bucks? At this point we don’t have a big fan base so I thought, why not just give it away at cost?” Sales of the Hastings Sunrise took off as soon as an American music blogger named Ryan Catbird gave a glowingly positive review of the album on his website, the Catbirdseat. Having sold most of the 300 records manufactured, the band will be repressing the album on coloured wax within a few months to meet the demand.
“I think [Catbird] is just very influential. He has a label and people like his website a lot,” Panda explained. “It worked out nicely.”
Orders were coming in from as far away as Germany and Iceland. “And we thought Iceland went bankrupt,” Oliver joked.
Apollo Ghosts will be playing at 3216 W. Broadway (Mel Lehan’s campaign office) along with Collapsing Opposites, Search Parties and Zombie Pistolero & his Guns on Apr. 14. For more information about the show, or to purchase the record, you can visit Adrian Teacher’s website at http://www.myspace.com/adrianteacher. - Discorder Magazine

Apollo Ghosts
By Alex Hudson

Apollo Ghosts have earned a devout local following with their combination of hooky guitar pop minimalism and bookish lyrical wit, but they may want to rethink their business model: the Vancouver trio recently released its debut album, Hastings Sunrise, on vinyl, and is selling it for a paltry five dollars. Meanwhile, listeners can stream the entire record for free from the group's MySpace. If these guys were on The Apprentice, Trump would have fired them the first week.

"The idea was that we would give it away at cost," explains singer and guitarist Adrian Teacher. “I think it costs $6.95 to make, so essentially we've lost money on it." A self-sustaining business endeavour it is not, but this is the era of the Radiohead pay-what-you-want model, meaning that bands need to take drastic steps in order to get their music heard. "It was kind of a marketing ploy," admits Teacher. "I knew that people would take a chance on a five dollar record."

But Apollo Ghosts' gamble may just pay off after all — the original pressing of 300 is almost entirely sold-out, with only a handful of copies left for the merch table during their upcoming west coast tour. The group recently signed to the New York-based Catbird Records, which will soon re-release the album on coloured vinyl and CD.

It's been a flurry of activity for a group that has only been together for a year and a half. "This band came out of the demise of a band called Caravan," says Teacher. "We started by playing lounge music — sort of like the antithesis to Caravan, which was crazy, over-the-top party music."

This soon morphed into rock, as Apollo Ghosts incorporated the lo-fi slacker aesthetic of early Pavement with '80s college rock jangle. Hastings Sunrise's opening track, "Dobermans," tells the story of a troupe of Chinese acrobats over the pulsing of a pump organ played with an accordion preset. Then, on the next track, the band kicks into overdrive with "Land of the Morning Calm," a Ramones-inspired stomper about a near-death experience in a Korean hospital.
Hastings Sunrise is full of such dramatic shifts in style, as it blows through its 14 tracks in a sprightly 27 minutes. "I think all of us have musical ADD or something," laughs drummer Amanda Panda. "As soon as a song starts to get kind of long, we're like, ‘How many times do we need to sing this chorus anyway?’"

Apollo Ghosts are characterized by this kind of restlessness — they've already released three music videos, the latest of which features the band squaring off against professional wrestlers from the BC-based federation Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling. ("I've always wanted to be in a wrestling ring," admits bassist Jay Oliver.) Rather than bask in the success of the album, the band has already recorded a follow-up EP, which will be released this summer. Teacher, Panda and Oliver hope to re-enter the studio by the end of the year in order to record a second full-length.

But, despite their feverish work ethic, the band's goals are humble.
"We all dream of the idea that we would be able to play anywhere in North America or Europe or Japan and have 50 people come and see us," says Teacher. "To me, that would be world domination." - Beatroute