The Appleseed Cast

Before emo became something of a joke marketed to emotionally overwrought teens, bands like Braid and Mineral and the early Appleseed Cast were lumped in with that genre. By the turn of the century, though, the Appleseed Cast had already evolved into something else. Experimenting more with the noises you can get out of a guitar, atmospheric feedback and shimmery sounds in general, the outfit is more a post-rock group these days than a peddler of the dreaded emo. But it hasn’t shed its focus on making evocative music, and its latest EP, Middle States, has both the understated intensity and dreaminess of Codeine and the deceptively minimalistic complexity of Tristeza. Consider this dream pop for those with a taste for the visceral.