Review Summary: A neighborhood made up entirely of tandem-bicycle riders. This is the place.
Rays of sunlight split through the creases in the tree line, highlighting bits of the forest floor. Fallen leaves are scattered amongst bushes, branches and a dirt path that gently twists and turns between immense tree trunks. The serene melody of a river running adjacent to the path tickles my eardrums as my bare toes knock against protruding roots. My little wooden cabin appears through the brush; smoke rising from the chimney, cows grazing in their pen, chickens cluck-cluck-clucking as they lay little floating eggs. My iron pickaxe is almost out of stamina when “Jupiter Gold” by Apollo Brown comes on shuffle and brings me a sense of comfort and serenity. Then everything’s okay once again.
At almost an hour and ten minutes, Apollo Brown’s “This Must Be the Place” runs over-long but in certain circumstances, it might in fact be the perfect length. What it does right is exactly what it does wrong. I didn’t realize upon listening to this record that it was an instrumental hip hop album with hints of alternative hip hop and jazz-inspired hip hop. With that in mind and twenty-one songs making up the run time, I would hope for a bit of diversity in terms of sound especially when there’s no lyricism or stories to lean on.
Because most tracks suspiciously have a length of three minutes and twelve seconds, the songs themselves don’t over-stay their welcome and last just long enough before they might become a bit too repetitive or uninteresting. With that being said, the songs themselves are enjoyable for the most part. They feature groovy, lively beats with intermittent splashes of ambience, pianos, guitars and even horns and orchestral pieces on occasion. The tempos are eerily similar and overall tone and vibes of the songs generally have a sort of happy, jaunty, almost gleeful sort of bounce to them. As the title of the album suggests, these songs seem to point to good times about where you are whether that be locational or metaphorical with where you are at this point in life.
When I say that it’s positives are also it’s negatives, I mean that while the songs are enjoyable, very relaxing and easy to vibe to, they also carry a sort of monotony because of how same-y the tempos and rhythms are. It’s wonderful background music for gaming, homework, cooking or just about any mindless activity but as an album to listen to with your full attention, it doesn’t work super well. It feels long when you try to focus on the nuances and patterns of the music. While I wouldn’t call it surface level, it does have a quality where having your brain focused on other things heightens the listening experience. I don’t know if that’s a back-handed complement but at the end of the day, I do enjoy this record for what it is, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
Top Tracks:
“Jupiter Gold”
“Pipe Dreams”
“Catching Moments”
“Got It Good”
“Nervous Goodbyes”
2.75/5
