The Appleseed Cast, The End, Tonight in Nashville

What does a music blog write about today? Apparently, everything that you care about happened last night during the the MTV Video Music Awards. Not interested, thanks. Instead, let’s talk about getting out to see something different tonight in Nashville.

Since forming in 1997, Lawrence, KS based band, The Appleseed Cast has morphed from one of the definitive bands of the emo era into a group that continues to explore the possibilities of rock music. The shoe-gazey atmospherics and instrumental experimentation pushes fans to expect the unexpected. A lot of this “morphing” is surely due to the numerous moves through different recording studios and record labels over the years. The bands first two releases, The End Of The Ring Wars & Mare Vitalis (via Deep Elm Records in 1998 & 2000), were received with significant critical acclaim within the emo and underground music scenes. The follow up to the initial success was a double LP, Low Level Owl Volume 1 & 2 (via Deep Elm in 2001). This double LP showed us a shift towards seemless post-rock soundscapes that blew fans away and garnered incredibly high reviews from Pitchfork. Following the success of Low Level Owl, The Appleseed Cast released Lost Songs EP (via Deep Elm in 2002), Two Conversations (via now-defunct Tiger Style Records in 2003), and Peregrine (via The Militia Group in 2003); none of which garnered much critical acclaim, and veered away from the post-rock successes that fans and the media wanted. The 2009 release of Sagarmatha (via The Militia Group in 2009) represented a return to grace for The Appleseed Cast, and the 2011 EP, Middle States (via Graveface Records on June 7th) carries that torch onward.

The Applecast Seed is currently touring in support of Middle States, and will be performing at The End in Nashville tonight at 9pm (click here for tickets). For those of you not familiar with The Applecast Seed, I have attached a couple of tracks from Low Level Owl and the title track from the new EP, Middle States (which you can download for free here).

It’s a Monday night…. Monday Night Football is just a warmup…. and you really need to get that image of Lady Gaga dressed up like Ralph Macchio out of your head. So, get out and see some live music.

Sunset Drama King from Low Level Owl, Volume 2