The Appleseed Cast

Item: Low Level Owl, Vol. 2
Author: Bert Gangl

Low Level Owl, Vol. 2

(2001)

Reviewed by Bert Gangl

Discogs Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Amazon Music Spotify YouTube Music

Label Deep Elm RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2001

emo post-rock

As one might glean from the title, Low Level Owl: Volume II is the second of two separately-released installments in a 26-song set from Kansas' Appleseed Cast. As with Low Level Owl: Volume I, which was released in August of this year, Volume II continues the quartet's fondness for lush, atmospheric emo rock compositions. "Strings" ties an engaging guitar line to the group's infectiously oblique lyrical inclination (Stepping down the maze/ A broken life will bind a broken man/ A second hand can sell/ To a fading sense of self) and ambient, echo-soaked musical section. And "A Place in Line" (Crushing leaves to find the spot on earth/ Bring me down/ The silence grows and leaves a chance to breathe) is an equally impressive combination of the group's delicate harmony work and intrinsically melancholy mindset.

Like its predecessor, Volume II devotes roughly half of its running time to instrumental tracks. But, where the lion's share of the instrumentals on the first album were mostly meandering and undistinguished, numbers such as "Ring out the Warning Bell," "Sunset Drama King" and a number of others from LLO II sport an elevated pop sensibility that makes the instrumental side of LLO II far more accessible than its earlier counterpart. Even so, the band does falter occasionally on entries like "The Last in Line" and "The Argument," which oscillates for nearly six minutes between two single-note measures of eight bars each. The nine-plus minute, album-closing "Confession," recycles the droning wall of industrial noise that closed out Volume I, exemplifying the Cast's fondness for overly elongated arrangements. If LLO II's instrumental side, on average, gets a slight nod over that of Volume I, the remainder of the release fares slightly less favorably, lacking both the urgency and the instantly memorable quality that made the first album's imposing non-instrumental tracks among the finest of the genre.

Devoted fans of the group will do well to pick up both Low Level Owl releases, given that both contain a sizable number of worthy entries, and program the two albums down to a single disc's worth of truly first-rate material. First time listeners of the Appleseed Cast are likely to be best served by picking up Volume I, given its much stronger set of songs. All said, the argument for having reduced the Low Level Owl project to a single album certainly holds some merit. But, even in spite of that, the Low Level Owl: Volume II release still works fairly well as a stand-alone project and, taken together with Low Level Owl: Volume I, forms one half of a relatively impressive two-disc work.

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