Sonic textures are king with Lawrence, Kan., act the Appleseed Cast. Photos by.
made there way through Denver to play an electrifying set at the on Saturday night in support of their latest and seventh album, “Sagarmatha” (an area in eastern Nepal that means “head to the sky”). The band has been around for upwards of a decade and it was great to see the new and old die-hard fans come out of the woodwork for our neighbors from Lawrence, Kan.
The Appleseed Cast became vested in the art of performance as much as an audience could hope for. It can’t be easy to sustain an invigorating performance for a band that primarily records post-rock, sonic-gaze type music. Eight minute instrumental ballads with slim-to-none vocals could be considered a challenge to translate live, and yet the band hits the full-bodied essence every time.
There is a substantial amount of textured sound that comes from the four-piece band even in a smaller venue. Bass player Nate Whitman and percussionist John Momberg are the newest additions to this constantly progressing line-up, and they seemed to sustain the essence of what singer Christopher Crisci and guitarist Aaron Pillar have been doing for years.
Watching Crisci live, there’s a noticeable sense of both precision and pretension to his music. The show was not just a long evening of droning and reverberation, but a multi-layered (and faceted) extension of communication. The music simmers slowly but leaves no holes, all spaces getting filled-in,
The band played songs from all their stylistic periods, including “Fight Song,” a sure-shot with the lyrics, “Take your troubled sorrow, this is the end of you and me…” They also played “The Summer Before,” from their latest album, showing off the lighter, more transcendent side. The band maintained consistency and professionalism that night, distributing their ebb-and-flow signature sound that we’d all come to hear.
Lisa Gedgaudas is a Denver freelance writer and regular contributor to Reverb.
Tina Hagerling is a Denver-based freelance photographer and web designer. See more of her work .
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