Thee American Revolution: Buddha Electrostorm

In the not-entirely-necessary-but-still-welcome-reissue department, allow me to add to the list Buddha Electrostorm. It’s the lone (to date) album from Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider’s side project, Thee American Revolution. An enjoyable psych rock romp, it makes more sense placed in the Apples’ continuum. Released in ’09, it falls neatly between the egg-head “non-Pythagorean scale” power pop of AiS’ 2007 New Magnetic Wonder and 2010’s Electric Light Orchestra MASH-note Travellers in Time and Space.

Buddha Electrostorm is Schneider and partner in crime Craig Morris letting their (metaphorical) hair down with half an hour of fuzzed-out stomps, stoopid riffs (“Grit Magazine” borrows liberally from “Smoke On The Water”), and deep psych thoughts like those in “Sleepwalker”: “In the mirrors of her mind / She saw love and love is blind”. Freewheeling, innocent (except for the gleefully-mean hot-shit guitarist takedown “Shoeshine Blues”), and most importantly, fun, Buddha Electrostorm is an excellent companion piece to Green Day’s similarly retro-minded 2008 play-make-up-and-wear-guitars lark with Foxboro Hot Tubs. This 2011 reissue adds “Sleepwalker” to the original release.