Skip to main content

Mare Vitalis

Despite all the rain last night, I made the trek up to Denton to see the Appleseed Cast at Rubber Gloves. This was my third time to see these guys and the first time to see them with their new-ish drummer, Nathan "Jr." Richardson.

As I've described their live show before, I feel like I'm watching waves crash on a beach. There's constant movement, but it's slow; there's a lot of beauty, but it's not all pretty; and it's rather peaceful. Last night was no different, and I think it was the best performance I've seen by them.

Promoting their latest, sixth proper full-length, Peregrine, the Cast dug out a few nuggets from their past too. Tracks from Mare Vitalis and Low Level Owl were the highlights for me, but I really enjoyed the new material too. I was very curious to hear Jr.'s parts on the older material because he replaced an incredibly unique player by the name of Josh "Cobra" Baruth.

Cobra had a style that could be best described as "lead" playing compared to standard, straightforward playing. Instead of playing with simple grooves, Cobra's playing was always a walking, behind-the-beat kind of rhythm. Well, Jr. faithfully duplicated the old parts, but he also gave them some extra flair. He left no dead space and played so well. I couldn't stop watching this.

Opening for the Cast was the one-and-only [daryl] and a relatively new band, Broadcast Sea. [daryl] was its usual good, but I had a hard time hearing everything. Broadcast Sea reminded me of Thursday and At the Drive-In, but they weren't tacky knock-offs.

Despite raining off and on last night, Rubber Gloves was packed (not to maximum capacity, but pretty full). Everybody was into the music and hanging out, leading me to think that this kind of community in post-hardcore is still very alive and well.

Comments

Kev said…
Heh, the drummer from my combo was up there seeing that same show last Friday; he called me while I was in New Orleans to ask for directions around Denton.

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J

Hello, Control

I'm still a big fan of iTunes . I haven't tried Napster , Urge or eMusic as I've been perfectly happy with Apple's program ever since I downloaded it two years ago. However, an annoying new feature has come up with its latest version, 7.0. Whenever you pull up your music library, a sidebar taking up 3/4ths of the screen appears plugging the iTunes Music Store. Why is this an annoyance? Well, first and foremost, since you can't close the sidebar, you can't escape it. I believe a music library is a private collection, a spot away from the music store. So what's the need for constant advertisements and plugs? To provide a better visual, let me describe what I see whenever I pull up a song in my iTunes library. When I listen to "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" by the Weakerthans, I see a graphic for Left and Leaving , the album that it comes from (and available in the iTunes Music Store), along with a list of the Weakerthans' other albums,