After a five-year hiatus that saw side projects from Hilarie Sydney in The High Water Marks (passably decent at best) and lead Apple Robert Schneider in Ulysses (to say it stunk would be kind), The Apples In Stereo are are finally offering up fresh fruit withe New Magnetic Wonder. Never until now had there ever been any sort of mainstream buzz over a new Apples record, but Schneider upped his profile a bit after his hilarious ode to Stephen Colbert's handsomeness on the Colbert Report's now infamous Green Screen Challenge episode (one that also saw Colbert smote The Decemberists Chris Funk in a rock-off with a little help from Peter Frampton). Now that Schneider has a general buying public's attention, is New Magnetic Wonder good enough to garner in some new fans? Maybe, but because it doesn't sound like a Nickelback record or High School Musical I'm guessing probably not.

People who are Apples fans however are obsessive ones at that and surely that's who this album is aimed toward. New Magnetic Wonder does deliver a few goods, mainly the perfect Pop wonder that is the second track "Skyway" and the tail-end psychedelic opus "Beautiful Machine Parts 1-2" and "3-4" respectively. Also Sydney's two contributions of main vocals on "Sunndal Song" and "Sunday Sounds" are excellent as well. But where New Magnetic Wonder starts to wear out its welcome is in Schneider's insistence of applying mellotron and vocoder to almost every single track. You know, if I wanted to listen to an ELO record, I would have fished it out myself thank you. The pacing of the album is hindered as well by Schneider's forcing of nearly a dozen instrumental tracks throughout. Most of them are simply just not needed. But these aren't really major gripes. There are good songs to be had here and anyone looking for a fun, sunshine-filled Pop-Rock album could do a lot worse.