The Appleseed Cast

Criteria
Russian Circles

Echo - July 14, 2006

Live Review and Photograph by Alexis Roberts

Back in the summer of ’04, I had bought tickets to see The Appleseed Cast tour with Piebald and was eternally bummed when I got to the show and found The Jealous Sound touring with them instead. The general public told me that The Appleseed Cast had called it quits after all those years of making music and it was pretty disappointing, seeing as how this was one of the bands that inspired so many others to come after them. They are right up there with bands like Mineral, The Promise Ring, American Football, and Sunny Day Real Estate. Know your roots, people—they started the emo craze. Recently, then, I was surprised to stumble upon their name and, upon visiting their website, find out that not only had they recently released a new album, Peregrine, but they were touring as well!

That’s how I rediscovered one of the many bands that I listened to in high school, and that’s also how I wound up at their Echo show on the same night that the Night Ridazz bicycling crew was tearing up the streets of Echo Park—as was the motion picture industry, filming a movie outside the venue.

The line to get into the show was fairly long, and although the Echo is known for being a breeding ground for hipsters, the people going into the show were anything but. I’m pretty sure I was the only person in the entire building without a beard (this is including females).

Russian Circles played first—and they ruled hard. I have never seen a crowd respond so well to an opening band, especially an instrumental one. The songs they have available for download on their MySpace page are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding their awesome sound and dynamic.

Criteria came in between. They might have been good, had Asshole Convention 2K6 not taken place during the set. It’s so difficult to enjoy yourself when drunken homies are trying to start a mosh pit, girls in skirts are dancing around in front of you with their arms in the air giving the punk rock sign and belligerent bros are next to you screaming the obvious “Criteria fuckin’ rocks maaaannnn!” How fuckin’ original, man. In between the chaos, I did catch their new song and it was pretty good. The best part was that Steve Pedersen had a picture of Britney Spears (when she was still hot) on his bass head.

Finally, the jerk parade left the building and The Appleseed Cast took over. Wow, wow and wow. I have never seen so many guitar effect pedals on one stage in my life—and although they had a ton of pedals, their stage setup was still open and airy, giving them plenty of room to…well, stand still while they played, because goodness knows that they don’t exactly get crazy. They played new songs, old songs, obscure songs, and even random sound clips between the songs (instead of speaking to the audience). During the last song, their drummer knocked over his drums in a brief rock star moment, kind of closing the door for an encore. Everyone waited around for a couple of minutes to see if they would come back out, fix the drums and grace us with one last song, but all we got was their drummer hopping back up on stage, knocking one more thing over, and then walking off stage again.

So there was no encore, unfortunately, but they played an excellent show. Their songs are strangely familiar even if you haven’t heard them before, probably due to the fact that they have influenced so many of the bands that are currently on the rise. To me, every song brings back a memory; one song felt like Christmas, the next felt like the beach at night last year, the next was graduation, and the next was that one winter when I actually had to wear gloves to keep my hands warm.

If you haven’t already, I would recommend that you pick up one of their many albums and acquaint yourself with The Appleseed Cast. They are a must-add for your collection. Like I said, know your roots.