THE STORY of the Appleseed Cast, a Lawrence, Kansas-based group of shape-shifting post-rockers, is a long saga of death and rebirth, valleys and peaks. The point generally agreed to be the zenith of their 11-year, seven-album career, is a sprawling 2001 double album entitled Low Level Owl: Volumes I & II, where they first transcended their status as a late-90s “ second-rate emo band.” They stood triumphantly atop their musical Mount Everest as Pitchfork handed them a near-perfect score and the prophecy that they were “about to be groundbreaking.”

The Appleseed Cast
Sagarmatha
Rating: 6.9/10
[The Militia Group; 2009]

Two Conversations

Peregrine

Sagarmatha advertises loftiness all over its perimeter, from its title (the Nepalese name for Mount Everest), to the sweeping vistas of its track names: “A Bright Light.” “The Road West.” “Raise the Sails.” “An Army of Fireflies.” Fraught with big-picture movements, stately phrases and barely decipherable melodies (vocals only make a couple of brief appearance), it may be the most inscrutable Appleseed Cast album to date. The decision to go mostly instrumental is unfortunate—the blood flows much more steadily in the songs that contain singing—but the effort to breach Sagarmatha’s high entry barriers proves more rewarding on each attempt.

The eight-minute “So the Little Things Go” opens, and it’s the closest thing to an Explosions in the Sky song the Cast has ever cranked out: a warbling arpeggio that repeats itself tirelessly until the surrounding atmosphere grows thick with humidity and erupts into a raucous thunderstorm. (A perfect vocal descant rips through the final stages, an excellent finishing touch.) Immediately after, a second slow-burner tails off in the opposite direction: after several minutes of straightforward, percussion-driven repetition, “A Bright Light” fails to direct the bluster it finally whips up. “The Summer Before” is one of few songs with any recognizable structure, and, after its brief three minutes, you can’t help but think Sagarmatha might have been better off with more of its directness and conciseness.

On their seventh record, the Appleseed Cast haven’t solved the issue that keeps critics perpetually divided and their music relatively unknown: are they doing something big here, or are they just distant and indulgent? Sagarmatha sports plenty of beautiful, seasoned craft, and no doubt many hours of careful calculation. But it occasionally gets lost in its own meandering, and a record so boldly titled could do with a few more glances over the precipice.

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