Outside lies a beautiful, sunny, early Southern spring day, yet the interior of my apartment is still oddly chilly. My eyes are hazy and sleep deprived, struggling to focus as I pull an enormous, cuddly navy blue hoodie over my shoulders, more for the emotional consolation than for the warmth that it offers. Peregrine is playing on my stereo and, like how the largeness of the hoodie more-than-envelops all of my small frame, the new sounds of the Appleseed Cast are a perfect fit for waiting out the last days of winter. Peregrine, the Kansas natives' seventh full-length and most ambitious effort to date, is an atmospheric, expansive and mostly instrumental indie post-rock opus that wavers from bone-chilling solitude to dancing flashes of sunshine flickering through the cracks.

Chris Crisci's submerged vocals bubble just below the lush, dramatic surface. While the lyrics hint at an ambiguous ghost story - a tale perfectly suited to the sound - neither the vocals nor the lyrics will be what lure you under Peregrine's spell. The Appleseed Cast have crafted a masterpiece that balances the evocative and ethereal with the grounded and tangible, but not at the expense of becoming trite, tired or boring as the record spins.

Even though the record kicks off to a slow start on "Ceremony," by the time the second track, "Woodland Hunter (Part 1)," rolls around it's too late to look back. The most compelling segment of the record is the forceful triumvirate of "Sunlit Ascending" "February" and "An Orange and a Blue." Both "Sunlit Ascending" and "An Orange and a Blue" bookend the angsty "Februrary" in brightness and beg for the breeze of cool, sunny days. Closing track "The Clock and the Storm" works its way into a thunderous whirlwind, bringing the album to a conclusion equally as manic and driving as the beginning was peaceful and meandering.