It’s All in the Beard
Credit: Chris Strong
Appleseed Cast.
I fucking love Cris Crisci’s beard. That thing is more than impressive. It could scare the beard right off Lincoln’s face were Cris to go anywhere near Mount Rushmore, and a rock-beard avalanche would crush the elk, backpackers and lonely watercolor artists communing with our national history in the valley below. Stay away from the Black Hills, Cris!
Crisci’s beard, with its wiry black chin growth flanked by patches of white pouring down like rivers of limestone from under the sides of his ever-present baseball cap, is the number one reason to see Appleseed Cast play the Record Bar tonight with White Whale. Reason number two is the Cast’s new album, Peregrine, a noisy, dynamic, inspired record possessed of a driving madness that’s in good part due to the mastery of the band’s new drummer, Nate Richardson, formerly of the Casket Lottery and hardcore legends Coalesce.
In my coverage of SXSW, I wasn’t able to work in a mention of the Appleseed Cast’s show at midnight on Friday of that weekend (at least, I think it was Friday; my chronological memory of that event is not rock solid. I do remember I got tacos before the show, and the tacos had raw jalape�os in them, and I nearly vomited out my flaming tonsils but felt refreshingly sobered up almost immediately afterward). There was a surprisingly large crowd with surprisingly few Kansas Citians in it, and the kids were crowding the front of the stage, singing along with Crisci and genuflecting before his beard. As with past AC shows I’ve attended, that one didn’t blow me away, despite the combined band-crowd energy. I think they’re better on record. Live, they seem to strive for an inspirational build, drawing on the old anthems to work the fans into a varsity-basketball-like sense of hope and glory. Peregrine, fortunately, shows the band venturing away from its Midwestern-emo-influenced roots and experimenting with sounds that aren’t always “soaring.” You won’t be disappointed if you like the Cast’s trademark desparate, tidal surges. But you won’t be disappointed, either, if you didn’t really dig that overwrought stuff.
Opening the show is fellow Lawrence band White Whale.
