28062011

The Appleseed Cast - Two Conversations (2003)
(indie rock / post-rock)

I started writing this review by stating that I've seen all The Appleseed Cast can perform. I had to erase the sentence when Hello Dearest Love burst into life like a field of tulips on a sunny summer morning. I had been completely feinted by the beginning, which would have started from where their last piece of art left off. The music is easier than before, even catchy at some points. Two Conversations reminds me of The End Of The Ring Wars – only with its windows washed, so you can see outside into all the brightness with which The Appleseed Cast is still able to appeal to people of all ages.

Two Conversations is a wide step into the light rock of which the band has shown some promises before in their earlier production. This isn't the silent Low Level Owl anymore though, neither is it the emotionally bursting The End Of The Ring Wars. This is The Appleseed Cast splashing all their bright colors on an empty, sorrowless canvas. The melodies in songs such as Ice Heavy Brances are captivating but not imprisoning. You're able to let your mind flow either into the music or into somewhere completely else. The songs aren't trying to penetrate through your ears. They're rather just moving you forward you as if you were a sweet lady pushed gently, yet firmly, by a true gentleman.

The lyrics aren't as abstract as they used but Fight Song, for example, doesn't need abstraction. It needs concrete incidents from the real world to suit its imminent flow. This very song is probably the best introduction to the whole band for a person who has never heard of their wonders. It bashes through my words of the melodies of the songs being not imprisoning. When you're listening to Fight Song, you are, indeed, imprisoned in a box of intricate drum beats and falling down the chairs with an expression of awe on your face.

And what the band did on their last album with the changes in tempo, they are also able to do here with Fight Song and Sinking. The only difference is that where in the last album the change in tempo brougth silence, calmness and peace, here the change brings forth distortion, roughened angles while maintaining sonority. The Page turns the music 180 degrees around again with its acoustic take on depression and writer's block.

Turning from an expected disappointment into an unexpected masterpiece, The Appleseed Cast delivered again. Soft as an eiderdown on a field of clover, yet dynamic as an aeroplane soaring through the skies – the expectations are set for Peregrine.

'Cause what I feel inside
I don't want to hide
It's you that got to me
It's what I want to sing
'Cause I've got a dream for us
Running through my mind
Sitting on the beach
Looking at the sea
and we're old and tired
and time has made us smile
as we go on counting things
People in the breeze
We're not the only ones
There's hundreds on the shore
looking at the sea
but it's just you and me
If the day never comes
I sink beneath the tide
Will you still be with me
or disappear?

A Dream For us by The Appleseed Cast

Try Two Conversations