According to the indie-rock gurus at Pitchfork, "Appleseed Cast just might have made an emo record for people who hate emo." And they seem to mean it in a good way. Still, guitarist Aaron Pillar has mixed feelings about this assessment of his band's latest effort, Peregrine.

"As far as it being a compliment, I guess I get it," he says, calling from the "junk room" of his Lawrence, Kansas, home. "But at the same time, it kind of bums me out. It's not like I care what they think. It's just that it goes back to 1997 when we happened to be on Deep Elm Records. And because of that, the emo thing has dogged us forever and I just don't think we sound anything like emo–whatever that is now."

He will concede that the opening riff on "Sunlit and Ascending" has a little bit of a Jimmy Eat World thing going on. But other than that, Peregrine is not your average postrock indie fare. With two moody, atmos­pheric instrumental songs bookending the CD, the finished product has a layered sophistication not found on the average Fall Out Boy album. In "Here We Are (Family in the Hallways)", lead singer Christopher Crisci displays a vocal intensity that is neither emotionally manipulative nor monochromatic. And the poppy, dreamlike soundscapes on "Silas' Knife" get the head bopping without making the stomach churn.

Pillar attributes this musical feat to how the Midwest quartet recorded its sixth studio album. For the first time, the members of the Appleseed Cast didn't lay down their tracks separately. They just sat down and basically played live to tape, something that took a little getting used to for Pillar.

"I felt really uncomfortable and I didn't like it," he admits. "It felt weird. I thought that we were totally fucking everything up. And then after, like, eight hours we finally got this one song done. It was actually a song that we didn't put on the record. But we finally got comfortable with that process after that, and started sounding more like a band than we ever have before."

Ironically, before heading into the studio to lay down tracks for Peregrine, the Appleseed Cast came dangerously close to disbanding. After the musicians got back from their 2004 European tour to promote Two Conversations, they went their separate ways and didn't speak for several months. Crisci went to work on his side project, Old Canes, and Pillar went on a downward spiral.

"I was just a freaking train wreck," says the candid axeman. "My relationship at the time went south in a really bad way and I got in some really bad money trouble. So I didn't see anyone for a really long time and they were pretty pissed at me."

Eventually, though, he called a band meeting, came clean about how his life had turned to shit, and they decided to pick up where they had left off. And apparently the Appleseed Cast reunited just in the nick of time. Pillar couldn't take much more of his day job.

"I was doing custodial work and it fucking sucked," recalls Pillar. "It was cool for about a month. I was like, 'Yeah, I like being responsible and normal.' And then I went, 'No, this really, really blows.'"

The Appleseed Cast plays Richard's on Richards on Tuesday (April 10).