Buy the EP We Love Our Enemy at PayPlay
If Sigur Ros gives us the sounds of glaciers grinding together, what KC's Actors & Actresses - whose moody post-rock is in some ways similar but more direct emotionally and less majestic overall - offer up is more intimate, somewhere between icebergs and ice cubes, the aural equivalent of something hard and frozen bobbing in water warmer than itself.
It's the sound of melting.
The trio's songs start with what seems like chilly restraint, a sound sometimes plodding and distant. But, as the slow riffs repeat, Andrew Schiller's guitar thickens and Scott Bennett's vocals lift into a warm falsetto. Best is the stately psychedelia of "Poverty," a seven-minute grind that seems slight at first but eventually makes you sweat.
For 25 minutes, these four tracks swell and sulk, accumulating power through the band's skillful repetition, each building to climaxes both meditative and muscular, each a mellow roar.
~ Review of We Love Our Enemy EP, Pitch Music, Feb. 06
O'Leaver's, well, you just can't beat it for its low-down, intimate vibe. You never know what you're going to get on any given evening. It could be absolute shit; it could be one of the best performances of the year. Saturday night's show was the latter.
Actors & Actresses, a three-piece that drove up from Kansas City, rifled through an amazing set of gritty, fuzzy, feedback-smeared slow-churners. Shoegazer on steroids. Someone referenced Sigur Rós... This was head-trip music. As one guy said, "I should have taken that acid before the set."
They were the first band in a long time that showed a video during a performance that actually enhanced the experience -- the collection of shots ranged from show-motion explosions to grainy b&w landscapes to atmospheric, decaying set pieces.. Well-edited and always interesting, and a perfect compliment to their sound.
And speaking of sound, the audio level also was perfect -- loud, but not painful. There was no need for earplugs. There also was no escaping its intensity, which is another thing I like about O'Leaver's...There's no place to hide in O'Leaver's. You cannot escape the music, and as a result, you're forced to pay attention...
~ Tim McMahan, Lazy I.com reviewing for the Omaha Reader
