By Dave Coonan

Tune: noun; correct musical pitch or consonance-used chiefly in the phrases in tune and out of tune.

Dissonance: noun; a mingling of discordant sounds; especially: a clashing or unresolved musical interval or chord.

Those are two words to remember while reading this review.

The “three chords and a dream” belief may work for some folks; the Ramones, the Clash, Michelle Branch, but not Beat Happening. Not only is the music repetitive, out of tune and monotone, but also boring, uninspired and bad. Music To Climb The Apple Tree By is a nauseating journey to musical hell and back, stopping in purgatory to say hi to all the restless souls who are much better off than if they were on earth listening to this album.

It wouldn’t be so bad if: 1) no one was singing, and 2) no one was playing any instruments.

The guitars are over-produced, overly saturated in chorus and reverb effects and, above all, out of tune (see above). In our day and age, 20 dollars can buy a decent tuner. But apparently it can’t buy a decent singer. Instead, it buys a whiner with a low, monotone voice reminiscent of the Crash Test Dummies. And he’s always in the wrong key. Mmm mmm, this is bad.

The eighth song on the album, “Secret Picnic Spot,” sounds like a bad beat poem. The final two minutes consist of an E major chord, being strummed in such a way as to mimic a grandfather clock chiming the hour. Clever, but obnoxious.

The opening track, “Angel Gone,” is a great way to start off the album. It lets the listener know, up front, that the next 14 songs will be the equivalent of an aural enema.

Following that colonoscopy is “Nancy Sin.” It almost has the same chord structure as Neil Young’s, “Rockin’ in the Free World,” and because of that solitary fact, “Nancy Sin” is the best song on the album.

The rest of the songs pretty much sound exactly like those, so why waste ink? The album title is certainly a unique one, but unfortunately, the only way anyone would ever climb an apple tree to this garbage is if they were coming down with a noose wrapped around their necks.