Brighton, MA
Leaning on the wall of Subterranean last night wearing iPod headphones and sporting a long gray beard was Chris Crisci, singer and guitarist for Kansas’s post-rock band the Appleseed Cast. He stood listening to a rough mix of his side project the Old Canes’ new album, due out in late October, while waiting for his band’s set 11:30 set to begin.
Meanwhile, inside the venue, Chicago’s Brighton, MA (I don’t get it either), a countryish rock band with Bob Dylan-vocals, played through a 45-minute set that, aside for a few moments, was never as exciting as it wanted to be.
The Appleseed Cast
The Appleseed Cast on the other hand, playing a mix from 2009’s Sagarmatha and 2006’s Peregrine, crunched through epic, guitar-driven songs, careful to sprinkle the weighty tracks with some of their more accessible ones along the way. Not that it mattered — the crowd clapped along to the epic instrumentals from the four-piece as enthusiastically as it sang along to the ones with lyrics. When the band walked offstage after a long encore, everyone waited till the last bit of reverb had died before reluctantly turning around for the exit.
It was a great show- here’s the Brighton, MA’s bio…
“Brighton MA hails from Chicago IL, which could, at first glance, seem confusing. They take their name from singer Matthew Kerstein’s birthplace, evoking the idea of all sorts of homes you can never go back to (even as the four band members build their own home within the name.) This is a fundamental element in Kerstein’s layered lyrics—they’re steeped in a history that remembers the past, only in as much as it informs the present. “