...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. C/D?

totally lost interest in this band when Neil Busch left

picked up source codes today.

1 spin : oh yes. all the declarations of its excellence are OTM.

Yeah, it's a classic for sure.

I picked up Worlds Apart and So Divided as well recently, and despite the venom that's spat at those records they're really not too bad at all. I think those records went down so badly, partly because they're not as good as Source Tags, but also because people took the bombast and 'pomposity' at face value when I'm not sure if that was the intention.

Oh, and Tao of the Dead slays

IX is really good. have been listening to it a ton. it occupies this weird space of seeming like an impressive departure while also being unmistakably ToD as much as anything else they've done. basically taking a different route to end up at more or less the same place. but some of what you might consider their security blanket sounds and structures are abandoned which if you are a listener over their career is actually striking. a similar effect to hearing 'intelligence' after ST&C, and not a million miles away from that at times.

anyway, very good

random observation: in a couple places sounds kind of like the cure, those longer/heavier tracks from kiss me/wish, but heavier still obv.

bloody hell, I love the title track of source tags and codes

sends shivers up my spine every time it starts.

worlds apart and so divided are so much better than source tags

yeah, "so divided" is destroying my soundsystem now.
walls are shaking.
its fucking brilliant.
(neighbour free week !)

still not got 'worlds apart', but I will ..

this crew have definitely leaped into my selective group of 'modern rock is not shit, and this lot prove it to me .. '

(just to prove a point re how much 'so divided' works its magic on me, I have posted on my blog about it, and that's a very rare even in 2015 !)

grr : "even" = "event".

I love this band. They're desperately uncool now (ex-Pitchfork darlings etc.) but they consistently put out strong material. IX is great; I have an edition that comes with Tao of the Dead pt. III as a bonus. It's 20 minutes long and definitely their crowning achievement.

. They're desperately uncool now (ex-Pitchfork darlings etc.) but they consistently put out strong material. IX is great

and its things like this that make me love a band.

i.e. a band that enjoys the short lived hipster sanctioned love, and yet still manages to ride the wave of excellence well after the love has gone.

I clearly need more by this band.

I also admire them for that reason, but I still think Worlds Apart is at least half terrible. (I'd salvage "Will You Smile Again," "Rest Will Follow," "Lost City of Refuge."). I don't think I ever got through either So Divided or Century of the Self more than a couple of times.

worlds apart is great but has a lot of embarrassing moments, which makes me like it more tbh. "let it dive" is still really gorgeous

i always thought so divided was very obviously an ep they expanded to album length but "wasted state of mind" is prob my favorite tod song

i really need to listen to ix though for some reason i sort of got exhausted with these guys circa the century of self which is great but could stand to be half as long. there are so many albums now

Tao of the Dead is my latter-day ToD fave but the last couple were solid

The 3 albums that succeeded Source Tags have lots of bits that I wouldn't usually be able to stomach but I find them quite endearing for some reason. I didn't like Worlds Apart at the time and ignored them entirely for many years, but recently I've come to really admire the fact that they've always just did what they wanted creatively.

Tao of the dead is their best record

just about every song on Source Tags is great. which is unusual for a record that takes so many risks/ mixes things up so much etc.

worlds apart is great but has a lot of embarrassing moments, which makes me like it more tbh.

i think i dismissed it at the time for gaucheness but i don't really hear that now, or i've just come round to it somehow. certainly the intro to the title track is lulz and should alone have convinced me to stick with them, but the bombast, the pseudo-russian folk song trappings, the 'lookit those cunts on mtv', it's all working for me right now.

time to catch up on everything after. so divided is sounding a little thin...

All their post-Source-Tags output has been at least good, full of hidden gems too. Unobtrusive album track 'Luna Park' for instance must be one of the greatest non-regular-songwriter tracks I've ever heard (up there with, say, Desire Lines by Deerhunter) - so much so I wonder why they don't let that guy write more stuff

what exactly is embarrassing on Worlds Apart? i don't think there's a weak song on there. the backlash was just ridiculous, like "Hey, ROCK BAND, STAY IN YOUR PLACE." there's just as much bombast as The Smashing Pumpkins, which were criminally uncool for years but are only starting to get begrudging p4k acceptance.

eh i just mean its bombast is occasionally carelessly deployed, plus the lyrics are often terrible in a really cynical and self-serious way (title track)

don't get me wrong i looooved that record in high school and still have a lot of affection for it.

the new record is GREAT btw

Unobtrusive album track 'Luna Park' for instance must be one of the greatest non-regular-songwriter tracks I've ever heard (up there with, say, Desire Lines by Deerhunter) - so much so I wonder why they don't let that guy write more stuff

jason reece? i mean he only has a few songs per record but i'd argue they're usually the best there. especially on the new one ("lie without a liar," "lost in the grand scheme")

Worlds Apart has Caterwaul, which I think is a Jason Reece song, and also one of the beat TOD songs. During one performance in Vera (2005 I believe) it was Jason who sung/screamed it in the audience, ending in a mass singalong. It was awesome.

beat = best

"caterwaul" was an encore for the source tags & codes show i saw and everyone went crazyyyy

it was surprisingly the emotional apex of the show

one thing tht was cool about ST&C was that you had not only Keely and Reece but also Neil Busch ("Baudelaire," "Monsoon"), whose songs and voice were totally distinct. Wish they coulda kept him around.

and yeah "Lie Without a Liar" is one of their new best ever, immense song

i love the song worlds apart. the HEY FUCK YOU MAN! at the beginning mixed really loud, "look at those cunts on mtv," references to the twin towers... im pretty sure hes taking the piss

lol i'm listening to tao of the dead for the first time and the best two songs on here are jason reece too ("weight of the son," "ebb away")

meanwhile tao of the dead fucking rules

Always appreciated the relative bluntness of the alt-nihilism in stuff like "worlds apart" and "let it die" - though when the 'fork is already having raver's remorse that kind of directness can be used against you (see Travistan)

it actually warms my heart to see ilm talking kindly about trail of dead right now, awwww you guys... 🐱

I haven't heard any of the albums after Century Of Self, but now I feel like I should check those.

This was one of my favorite songs for a very long time. Nothing after this EP really stuck with me, though I haven't listened to recent records closely. It seemed like after this EP they suddenly were trying too hard to be "epic" or "deep" or angsty. Overall they came off much much less mature sounding to me from then on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYMY4Ak24JM

The recent albums are vv different from the mid-period stuff, somehow both proggier and much more disciplined

not to mention way less vocal/lyric-driven than before, a good move imo

Yeah I'm going to check out the most recent again for sure.

their cover art is totally hilarious

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61jr9gk8r1L.jpg

It looks like the cover art of a bad steam-punk themed RPG for Dreamcast.

a new 12-book fantasy sci-fi series for middle-grades readers

Yeah I can't defend that cover. The album's really good though.

What's to defend? As gt says, it's hilarious.

Re: Crowning of a Heart - not to be that guy, but I like the demo better:

https://youtu.be/OWNh1LOUxx8

Oh that's great! I didn't know it existed. At first it sounded a bit too shy, but once it started picking up I realized why it can be preferable.

um

the new album is *fucking amazing*

first half of it at least