Apes of the State

A guitar instead of the alternative

Apes of the State began in 2015 as a solo bedroom project by April Hartman, written in the months after rehab in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The band's own account of the turn is blunt: she picked up a guitar and started writing about things rather than taking drugs about them. That origin has never been sanded off the material. Addiction, relapse, debt collectors and dead friends are the recurring furniture of the songs, handled with jokes rather than solemnity.

The early sound came out of the American folk-punk lineage — Pat the Bunny and Paul Baribeau are the names the band cites — and Hartman filled out the acoustic songs with players picked up at Lancaster open mics rather than assembled by audition. What emerged was a hybrid: acoustic guitar and violin doing the melodic work, punk phrasing and pop-punk momentum underneath, and lyrics that land closer to stand-up than to poetry before they turn and cut.

The present line-up is Hartman on vocals and acoustic guitar, Mollie Swartz on violin, Ian Cornele on drums and Moth Rogers on bass. Rogers joined in 2026, replacing founding member Dan Ebersole — the first change to the band's core in years, and one that arrived in the middle of their busiest touring stretch.

Four albums, no label

The debut, This City Isn't Big Enough, appeared in 2016: small-room recordings, largely acoustic, and the record that still supplies the songs the crowd knows word for word. Pipe Dream followed in 2019 and pushed the arrangements outward without abandoning the mandolin-and-violin frame. Between and around them sit the artefacts of a band that documents everything — the demo collection it's amazing how much has changed, and how much hasn't, the Ghost Motel Session from 2019, a split with Local News Legend and Mx Wander, and They Can't Kill Us All with Sister Wife Sex Strike, a song that has since become the standard set-opener.

During the pandemic lockdowns the band ran Coping with Dystopia, a remote collaboration series that raised more than $10,000 for charitable organisations and did more for their reach than any label campaign had. The audience that arrived through it is the one now filling 300- to 600-capacity rooms.

What's Another Night? arrived in spring 2025, the third full-length and the first in six years. Reviewing it for Swim Into The Sound in early May 2025, Lillian Weber read it as a record about survival and about honouring friends who did not make it, and singled out the line on Little Things — not saying let's take life seriously, but serious about you staying alive — as the album's centre. Punk Rock Shows in Heaven, Strangers, Dear Mom and I'm Okay! came from those sessions and have stayed in the set ever since.

Nothing Makes Sense Anymore followed on 4 August 2026. Hartman wrote and recorded its ten songs between November 2025 and March 2026, and the result points backwards sonically and forwards politically: My Body is a Weapon, Fascists Only Speak Violence, I Saw God in a Homeless Man Yelling at the Sky, Love Song for the Class War. The cover art is by Ness Loucks. Where What's Another Night? grieved, this one argues.

The business end of doing it yourself

Everything is self-released. Records go out through the band's own Bandcamp and shop, with vinyl and CDs distributed into Europe via Flail Records rather than through a licensing deal. Hartman has been explicit that the point is to demonstrate that a band can work outside the conventional industry structure rather than as a waiting room for it.

The same instinct explains the volume of live material in the catalogue. I AM a Special Snowflake was captured at the Apes Estate on 19 January 2025; a full Live in Seattle – Night 1 recording from 2 October 2025 went up soon after. These are not archive scrapings released to fill a gap — they are how a band without a promotional budget keeps something new in front of an audience between albums.

Instrument endorsements have come the usual DIY way round: GHS Strings announced the band as artists in 2019, after the touring had already started.

2026: an anniversary, a line-up change and a European run

2026 marked ten years since This City Isn't Big Enough, and the band built a multi-stage anniversary tour around it, playing the album front to back in its original acoustic instrumentation before switching to a full-band electric set of newer material. The format was in place from the start of the year: at eyedrum art & music gallery in Atlanta on 10 January 2026 the show ran 7pm to 11pm, cost $15, was all ages, and had Clover Lynn & the Hellfires and the banjo player Lee Johnson opening. The following night they played the Firehouse Community Arts Center in Birmingham, Alabama, with a set that pulled Sober Intentions, Bill Collector's Theme Song, Plate Glass Apology, Cats in Heat and Timeline alongside the anniversary material.

April took them through the UK and Ireland: Bristol on the 15th, Nottingham on the 16th, Manchester's Star and Garter on the 17th, Edinburgh on the 18th, Glasgow on the 19th and New Cross Inn in London on the 26th. The Manchester setlist — They Can't Kill Us All, Bill Collector's Theme Song, Strangers, Punk Rock Shows in Heaven, Internet Song, I'm Okay!, I Listened, Sober Intentions, Plate Glass Apology — ended with a cover of Wingnut Dishwashers Union's Fuck Shit Up performed with the local band Cheap Dirty Horse, which is roughly how these shows tend to finish.

Festival slots followed at home: Sing Us Home on Venice Island in Philadelphia on 1 May, a six-song set at Stoopfest in Lansing on 9 May, and a headline date at The Meadows in Brooklyn on 15 May.

Where they stand this autumn

The current run is the longest of the year and the first built around Nothing Makes Sense Anymore. It opened at the Black Cat in Washington on 16 September 2026 with a thirteen-song set, then took in Underground Arts in Philadelphia on the 18th, Racket in New York on the 19th, Brighton Music Hall in Allston on the 20th and the Showcase Lounge at Higher Ground in South Burlington on the 21st. Cheekface share every date, with billing that flips between co-headline and support depending on the market.

From here it continues through Spirit in Pittsburgh on 24 September, The Pyramid Scheme in Grand Rapids on the 25th, Bottom Lounge in Chicago on the 26th, the Mod Club in Toronto on the 28th, Montage Music Hall in Rochester on the 29th and the Cambridge Room at Cleveland's House of Blues on the 30th, before High Noon Saloon in Madison on 1 October, the Fine Line in Minneapolis on the 5th and St Louis on the 7th. Two nights at the Vera Project in Seattle on 4 and 5 December close the year.

The venues tell the story better than any press line does. A band that was playing basements and community spaces is now routinely in ticketed clubs of several hundred, in three countries, with no label behind any of it. Album of the Year records a user score of 68 for What's Another Night? from 19 ratings and no professional critic reviews at all — the scene press has not caught up with the touring, which is largely the point.