When I heard Castevet was scrapping their new record entitled The Echo and the Light simply to rerecord it, i was a little taken aback. To me the album sounded just fine; a perfect follow up to 2009's Summer Fences. But bands will be bands. For the months that I waited for the proper release of their reworked sophomore disc, I listened to the original cut of The Echo and the Light thinking, "This record is really solid, can they really make it sound better than this?" The answer is a big, 'Yes… Jesus Christ yes.' The second go around on this record is so mindsplitting and perfect it literally makes me want to call Nick Wakim and apologize for doubting them. Castevet are the rally call to a genre manly feel is , constantly repackaged fade waiting for it's swan song. If Summer Fences was their mission statement, The Echo and The Light is them taking their plan into action. This record is so bold in it's take on midwestern emo music that it's hard to pin them down. I hear a lot of people describe them as American Football meets Small Brown Bike meets the Appleseed Cast, but I feel as if those comparisons don't do the band justice. Sure they blend emotional burly vocals with sometimes mathy and rapid sometimes atmospheric post-rock instrumentals like the aforementioned bands, but however at this point in Castevet's career they seem much more in control of their craft. They have their obvious influences, but they aren't biting anyone here. The Echo and The Light opens with might be one catchiest rock tracks i've heard in a long time, regardless of genre; from there on out its game on. Where Summer Fences took time to breathe and was more a display of drawn out, slowly building beauty, The Echo and the Light is a brash, more condensed record, thriving with energy and liveliness. It's hard to say if I like it more than last years Summer Fences or not, but it is defiantly not a rehashing of the same ideas and it is most defiantly a record that demands replay. I would know, with over 350 listens it holds the title as my most listened to record of 2010.
-YtWt
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