I had only heard of The Appleseed Cast the week before their show at The Clubhouse in Temple. I was alerted by an article calling them “America’s Radiohead.” I rushed down to Zia Record Exchange and bought the two available discs. I am more of the opinion after hearing the music seeing them live that they are America’s Pink Floyd. The two guitarists, Christopher Crisci and Aaron Pillar get keyboard sounds from their pedal driven effects. The vocals by Crisci are very much like Roger Waters with a little Sting thrown in.
I was amazed to find out from a fan in line that the band had been together since 1998. He had samples of all the releases on his laptopand he played a little of each to give me an idea of their progression. The current release Perigrine is on The Militia Group label. The show leaned heavily on it’s material with at least five songs on the set list. I went into the concert thinking that Appleseed could be huge and nothing diswayed me from that except that they had been out much longer than I was aware. Flaming Lips are a good case in point, that success can be much delayed (12 years before world recognition).
The evening was exhausting and exhilarating. The three opening bands were nice surprises. Beyond Analog was the local representative and they impressed with very strong vocals by Mathew Romero and beautiful orchestral arrangements. Mars Volta and Yes came to mind at times. Russian Circles’ guitarist reminded me of Jeff Beck meets David Gilmore. Saddle Creek artist Criteria was quite a departure from the labels staple of indie bands. At first they sounded more like a Victory Records type band minus the screamo. As their set progressed they started sounding more like Janes Addiction and Queens of the Stone Age. Lead singer Stephen Pederson was quite animated. AJ Mogis played bass and is the brother of Bright Eyes member Mike Mogis. AJ frequently provides engineering and production talents to Saddle Creek and Team Love efforts. I went away from this evening very satisfied that this was one of the better club shows I had seen in recent times.
