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Fun Fun Fun review: Appleseed Cast
Tammy Perez
FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
When the Appleseed Cast announced earlier this year that they were embarking on a tour to play both “Low Level Owl” albums in their entirety on each night, you might have been wary of buying a ticket. Granted, these releases are post-rock masterpieces: They weave in and out of soothing, repetitive guitar phrases that swirl through seas of feedback, and each grandiose, symphonic instrumental bleeds into the next. But much like the rest of the Appleseed Cast’s catalog, these songs mostly form an ideal soundtrack for gazing at your ceiling on a stormy night. Standing and soaking them in over a two-hour period just sounds tiresome.
The Kansas-based band initially dodged this perception when they took the Orange Stage on Saturday afternoon. They kicked off with “Doors Lead to Questions,” a meditative instrumental from the first volume of “Low Level Owl,” but mercifully cut it well before the three-minute album mark. They then immediately dove into “Steps and Numbers,” the melody-driven centerpiece from the same record. Frontman Chris Crisci raised his black and grey bearded face to the sky for each verse, belting out his melodies an octave above those on the album cut, effectively replacing the song’s brooding crawl with a driving punch.
But for much of the rest of the set, the band members just seemed lethargic. They played the more concise, vocal-driven cuts from their recent albums, including “The Summer Before” and “Mountain Halo,” but they rarely looked up from their instruments. Even their between-song banter felt flat. Before trudging through “As the Little Things Go,” the looping eight-minute instrumental from last year’s “Sagarmatha,” guitarist Aaron Pillar looked up to mumble some encouragement for the rest of the festival. “Have fun and enjoy yourselves. I will.” It was hard to believe him.
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Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Fun Fun Fun Fest
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By Alex
November 8, 2010 6:24 AM | Link to this
They blew me away. I don’t care if they look up from their instruments or banter. That’s not really the point those kinds of bands.
By lucas
November 8, 2010 5:51 PM | Link to this
you get on stage at 2pm after a night of sleeping in the van and we’ll see how happy you look.