Chariots of Fire

Album Review

On their second album, Nashville indie trio Apollo Up! refuses to stick to one specific musical style. "Cut Up," for example, unexpectedly delves into the kind of A Certain Ratio style early-'80s Brit funk recently rediscovered by a generation of Franz Ferdinand followers, complete with spiky trumpet interjections. Further along, on "Even if You Don't Die" and "Custom Critical," lead singer Jay Leo Phillips trots out a startlingly accurate impersonation of the young Elvis Costello set to Ted Leo-style blends of punk and old-school R&B. Later still, "Tennessee for Victory" is a bracing two-minute pop-punk blast with a fists-in-the-air chorus. The connecting thread of all of this is the bristling energy captured by producer Jeremy Ferguson, whose early work with the vaguely similar Be Your Own Pet carries a similar frisson. It's extremely easy to pick out the influences on Chariots of Fire — way too easy, in fact — but there's a spark of creativity to this young band that suggests that their future albums may integrate these influences into something more unique.