...Trail of Dead - Worlds Apart.

as far as the biggest drop in score, i don't remember what score A Thousand Leaves got, but i'm sure from it to NYC Ghosts & Flowers' 0.0 was probably a bigger one.

i all but agree with thier review. BUT, that said, i still bought the album after hearing the leaked version, i had to know if it was meant to sound like that or not.
sadly, it was.

but, there's still some gems in there. just not as many of them. and the ones that are good, aren't quite as good as before...

but, i'll still go see em live.

TIME FOR A LONG OVERDUE CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL

this album is fucking brilliant.

Fucking brilliant? No.
A solid album that is under-appreciated? Yes.

well, that's a step in the right direction at least. i feel like this got a hard time when it was released because people were expecting a lot of things after Source Tags and Elena's Tomb and Worlds Apart was not amongst those expectations. also, they were a singularly humourless band up to that point, so the injection of fun was maybe a bit jarring. it was a really strange album to attempt, so the fact that they pulled it off so well gets overlooked.

"let it dive" is one of my favorite songs ever, no joke

this is a really pretty good album

Seconded. It got some harsh reviews when it was released, but it has aged quite well. Their new album i also pretty rad.

^^^this also, "Luna Park" is pretty much my song of the year at this point, which is weird because it's pretty much the only song no review has really singled out. I think it's absolutely tremendous, a delirious race to the line masquerading as a piano ballad

coda to "let it dive" been in my head all day...and yes, this album has aged REALLY well

their best album by a mile

yes, but maybe not a mile

I have IX as their second best btw, that's weird

the big poll/thing we did recently was extremely fun, obv

Happened to just read they're going to tour (well at least festivals) next year playing ST&C in full. Their best album, that :)

again? i saw them do that a few years ago. it was great but i think my favorite part was "caterwaul" in the encore

i think century of self and tao of the dead might both be better than worlds apart but the ranking shifts constantly

worlds apart sometimes feels a little... underwritten in parts to me? it may just be incapable of surprising me anymore bc i listened to it constantly in hs

Surprised & endeared that this thread bump actually got some responses. I feel like they've been thrown to the wayside & forgotten. Happy to hear they're still touring, was just thinking about that.

wait i’m listening to tao of dead now and it’s definitely the best

agreed. looks fantastic on LP as well.

I remember listening to the World's Apart leak on my first days of university and having absolutely no idea what to make of it

I remember thinking "The Rest Will Follow" was an instant classic, a song that felt like it was always there, familiar. Like it had been plucked from the ether. I love the production on this album, everything from the drums, the sound effects, the strings, and the dry vocals mixed really high. That song is so so thrilling, imo more so than anything on ST&C.

when i heard worlds apart i thought "oh, they're the smashing pumpkins now, awesome"

ha, exactly! he sounds just like Billy on Worlds Apart.

and iirc that observation was shared by many of the critics who panned the record

who knows what it is with me and dudes who have extremely nasal voices and can only sorta sing

at least in the case of corgan/keely imo they come up with kinda oblique and unusual vocal melodies that are still really lovely (i say this with "let it dive" stuck in my head)

jason reece sounding kinda like ian mackaye prob prepared me to love fugazi

they're both great melody writers. there are lots of beautiful vocal flourishes on Worlds Apart - like the way he sings "comfortable" the second time in the first chorus of "A Classic Arts Showcase." or the ferocity at the end of "Worlds Apart." he's very tuneful

xp Reece is also a great melody writer, cf. chorus of "Caterwaul"

and "The Summer of '91" - which is probably the most MCIS-esque song on the record, i.e. the bare piano & dry vocals in the beginning that builds into this epic thing

xp Reece is also a great melody writer, cf. chorus of "Caterwaul"

― flappy bird, Wednesday, December 13, 2017 11:41 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuckin hell yeah he is. cf. my favorite trail of dead song, "ebb away"

wish I had a list of Reece's songs. I suspect that he is proportionally overrepresented on my TOD CD-80 I did a short while ago

he definitely came up with 'luna park', which is a preposterously great bit of songwriting

Neil Busch, too. "Baudelaire" is one of my favorites. Very few rock songs bring you to the edge of a cliff like that one.

I miss having Neil Busch in the band for sure, he was their Lee Ranaldo

Surprised & endeared that this thread bump actually got some responses. I feel like they've been thrown to the wayside & forgotten. Happy to hear they're still touring, was just thinking about that.

― flappy bird, Wednesday, December 13, 2017 5:53 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We did this poll last year which gathered quite some response link

haha oh yeah! i'm sure i'm in there

we never did work out their british analogue

I still say it was the cooper temple clause, another angst-ridden band with a terrible name, dodgy vocalist, stupidly ambitious kinda-breaktrough album, nicked riffs from Sonic Youth, and whose hype cycle was one album long. of course the main difference is they called it quits.

I thought they were better back when they were trying to be grandiose Sonic Youth.

oh my god the cooper temple clause were like my favourite band when i was 17 OF COURSE

their second album was still pretty good and possibly even more ambitious than the debut. their third album is one of the worst records ever made

Ha yeah CTC actually makes sense!

lol xp

the third album has a few good songs but the label mangled the track selection, which inspired its title. the b-sides (some of which are basically impossible to find online in decent quality) are, by and large, much more inspired.

the second album was the ambitious one I had in mind. a real kitchen-sink record.

god dammit i am listening to 'digital observations' for the first time in ten years

first album is notable for 'did you miss me' and 'murder song' and the rest idk i mean those are the only two i've listened to in ten years until now (see previous post)

the first album has some great songs but the angst is just so extra and the production is bizarre

this might be one of the most effortful rock albums ever. they were trying so hard!!

they've always tried hard. it suits them

this was their reward

"Let It Dive" was featured in the EA Sports video game MVP Baseball 2005. "Will You Smile Again?" was the emotional charge in a scene to end of 7th episode titled "Hurts" of The Shield in season 4. It also appears in the Codemasters video game Colin McRae: Dirt 2 and the 2005 movie Goal!

"Let It Dive" was featured in the EA Sports video game MVP Baseball 2005

my friends in my freshman year of college played this game a lot, and i would always say "i love this song" whenever it started playing

"let it dive" is one of my favorite songs ever, no joke

― J0rdan S., Thursday, July 23, 2009 1:14 AM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

hahaha this rules

for the first time in a decade I listened to the title track

in retrospect making your potential breakout single a very bad song that directly references 9/11 and Cribs not such a hot idea

the title track rules but the lyrics do not

^this

as I keep saying though, Worlds Apart is an obviously v good album - admitting you love So Divided is the galaxy-brain move

and in fact, as was discovered when we polled them, they've never done an album that isn't good

"the best" makes me think of the foos one, which I only like in cicierega context

it predates "best of you" by at least two years!

loooove cicierega's 'best' but yeah he missed a trick not throwing this in too haha

woulda been funny if trail of dead pulled a killing joke on them

god there are so many segues on this thing, I swear it's half segues

every time I revisit this I do find the second half mostly a slog. "a classic art showcase" is a not great rock song stapled onto a kinda boring string part. I don't really get "the best".

"lost city of refuge" is one of their best songs though

if I were managing them I would have been extremely direct with them during this period lol

I don't like this album because it's the first album where they noticeably shifted away from their Sonic Youth / Unwound influences and to me it's so angsty in a way where it makes their older stuff sound more tasteful and mature in comparison. Last thing I loved by them was Secret of Elena's Tomb.

If I’m not mistaken this album came with a bonus dvd of them touring and there was a scene where I think they were at some festival trying to bum music gear so they could play and other bands were wary of loaning because of their destructive set tendencies.

they noticeably shifted away from their Sonic Youth / Unwound influences

yeah their pivot to (purposely?) sound more mainstream is closer to...like the gothy end of Blink-182 lol

Not sure if Simon still posts here but anyway I didn't mean "mainstream" - more that it was like their collective influences completely changed suddenly; as if all the members got replaced by people with totally different musical backgrounds who were still tasked with making their own idea of "trail of dead" records.

It's worth hearing their later albums. The influences you like fluctuate, but they're never too far away

imago otm, I actually thought last year's Bleed Here Now was one of their best in quite some time

IX might be my favourite of their albums full stop

I need to revisit that one, came at a weird time and I'm not sure I ever gave it enough time.

One thing I'm struck by is how consistent they've been. All their albums are at least quite good.

I forget about this band in between thread bumps. Time for another binge.