Album Review: The Appleseed Cast - Illumination Ritual

If you're not yet acquainted with The Appleseed Cast, make Illumination Ritual the first album of theirs you listen to. The band's eighth full-length is a triumph of confluence, and is probably the most helpful introductory guide you're going to get for their sonically sprawling back catalogue.

If that sounds contradictory, you have to understand: The Appleseed Cast have taken a kind of circuitous journey from their 1998 debut, The End Of The Ring Wars, to the here and now. Their acclaimed second album, Mare Vitalis, raised comparisons to seminal mid-'90s emo groups such as Sunny Day Real Estate and Mineral. In 2001, their two-volume Low Level Owl progressed to ethereal, heavily-layered soundscapes centred on dynamics and punctuated by lengthy instrumental stretches. By 2003, their concept break-up album, Two Conversations, was showing more concise, indie-rock leanings, before Peregrine (2006) took that avenue of exploration to its logical conclusion. The little-mentioned Sagarmatha, in 2009, went the opposite way, deep into post-rock country. So it's understandable that it might be daunting to jump on at this point with a sound that has progressed both so naturally and yet so radically from release to release.

That's why Illumination Ritual is such a rare listen. There are elements, seamlessly woven together, that span the band's 15-year recording career: in the distinctly Low Level Owl-esque opener, Adriatic To Black Sea, and 30 Degrees 3 AM; the echoes of Two Conversations in Great Lake Derelict and standout, Cathedral Rings; the strains of Mare Vitalis that course through Barrier Islands (Do We Remain), and the electro-instrumentalism of Branches On The Arrow Peak Revelation, a style previously toyed with on Peregrine's Mountain Halo. Essentially, Illumination Ritual could be any of The Appleseed Cast's past albums – but that's also why it is arguably one of their best.