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

source tags was simply one hell of a record. definitely some grand ambitions at play, but the whole thing just scorches from start to finish. some really affecting sweeping guitar lines and a consistently focused quota of rock - there are a good 6 or 7 tracks on here that are real keepers. i think it genuinely feels like an important and exciting record, something that the arcade fire aspire to but have never pulled off with any great conviction.

I've always suspected that the hate that greeted the post-Source Tags albums is because some people feel betrayed when their loud bands trade in angst for drama. Sure, World's Apart isn't the album that Source Tags is, but it's not remotely a 4 to STAC's 10; that's such obvious knee-jerk backlash.

I am liking this on first listen :-/

"bells of creation" and "luna park" are REALLY good....the entire midsection of this album is startlingly proficient music....while retaining a slight whiff of artless bedwetter sturm und drang....but who cares tbh

Just cos RS is about, I'll bump...have been listening to these guys (basically the three albums RS mentions) obsessively over the past 2 days...have little to add except that their noise, although crude, obvious, and often very simplistic, is utterly arresting, and somehow completely self-justifying. In other words, glorious. There's just something singular enough about this band to make them work like a dream, something in their *slightly* skewhiff, eccentric approach to song-structure, their humour, their pointed miniaturisation (and acceleration) of the epic. And all the while, it's crude! And artless! And great!

i like their songs

yah tbh this is the nub of it

really wish "heart in the hand of the matter" reprised its chorus at the end tho...that song's my fave on ST&C regardless but dammit man dammit you can't just write a chorus so freaking epic and then not reprise it after the middle eight yeah i see you're trying to be restrained and maintain some sort of suspenseful album narrative but jesus couldn't you have just given us that chorus again, just once

"will you smile again", on the other hand, is pretty much perfect and brilliant and oh shit that song...the use of jazz trumpet is completely inspired and really frames the song's mood in an unusual, slightly crazed place, whence the resulting build is much more interesting, effective, and unique

"will you smile again", on the other hand, is pretty much perfect...

Except I really wish there was an extended version where the closing barrage of riffage went on for another 20 minutes.

That is the last perfect song they did.

i like "Life" a lot. the piano is sultry & nimble. it's the only song in their catalog i would call sexy. is it perfect? i don't know. i don't really try to identify perfection, but to my ears it stands up against any of their songs.

'another morning stoner' remains the most definitive and important statement the band made for me. i remember getting a bit of a thrill when i first heard it and being particularly touched by the knockout punch of its closing bars. this band really manages to encapsulate huge sounds effectively.

Jesus, I'm completely obsessing over "Luna Park"...I think for all my bluster about progression and surprise, I'm still a total sucker for a neat build, a killer key-change, a tempo-alteration, pounding piano and skyscraper guitars, especially if they're all deployed at once

<3 trail of dead <3

just so fuckin wildly awesome. unreal.

Lol every time at

Kids: Yaaayyyy!
Conrad: Hey fuck you man!
Kids: Hahahaha!

That song is so lazy compared to what they did up till then.

I listened to Source Tags for the first time in a few years today, I'd forgotten how brilliant it is from start to finish. One of my favorite albums of this decade probably.

Saw them this past weekend. They were alright.

ok.

i fucking love 'lost songs', and 'so divided'

how have i missed out on this band ..

did they ever hit the uk in the same way as the usa ?

I love the first three albums still! And at least half of the Elena's Tomb EP.

i don't know that they can really claim to have made much impact in the US or elsewhere. they got some notices in the UK music press around the 2nd album, which is when i first heard them, and i think source tags reviewed well in the UK but without making any kind of splash that i recall.

they had an ep on chemikal underground of all labels c. the first album that i dug up later

typical.

i pick up the later era material and fall for that which i guess is not worthy to the real fans of the band.

xpost : chemikal underground !! well i never ..

so divided is horrible but everything since then has been good - lost songs is great. source tags and worlds apart are best of course. madonna is very good, first one is kinda half baked but couple of barnstormers on there.

i seriously love the excessive production/melody groove of so divided, but now i have heard lost songs i can hear why it was hated by fans of the band

well i think worlds apart would check those boxes but does it much better. maybe so divided is better than i give it credit but i couldn't bear it at the time, and it was kind of a cobbled together, 'get out of this record deal' affair together with obligatory cover version and recycled old track.

anyway, it is not for me to try and dissuade anyone from liking any part of this band's output, hooray for trail of dead.

I though ...so divided was enough to get me off the bus, but then I saw them around Century of Self period and remembered how much I liked them.

It may or may not help Mark, but the hand of Sonic Youth hangs heavy over the first album and less so (but still noticeably) over Madonna. They don't really become a really original band until Source Tags.

summary : i need 'source tags'

cheers folks ..

(oh, and listen to lost 'songs again', it's rather good .. )

Actually pretty stoked to see 'Source Tags' in full tonight ... Sure hope it 'guns' tonight as good as rekkid still does...

Tao of the Dead was surprisingly good. I should really give Lost Songs a spin.

saw the source tags show on friday. wasn't expecting much, but it turned out to be really good.

wtf are you guys talking about So Divided rules

Worlds Apart > So Divided > Source Tags

the source tags show in boston was also awesome. only two people on stage who were actually involved in making the record but so what. i'm not going to say that i wasn't disappointed they didn't keep faith with my copy of the record and play blood rites but they did go straight into mistakes and regrets so i guess i will give them a pass.

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