Trail Of Dead - Alt-rock codes for the new millennium

Welcome to Post-Hardcore: the masterpieces

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, wild and direct, already contained many seeds of the band's future sound. A few forgivable small naiveties were offset by the strength of extraordinary tracks such as the gripping post-rock of "Novena Without Faith", the evolved hardcore of "Fake Fake Eyes", the sonic whirlwind of "Prince With A Thousand Enemies", and the quartet's first manifesto: "Richter Scale Madness", which immediately showed off all the potential of Reece, Keely and co.

The album inaugurated a series of beautiful, meticulously designed covers that would characterize all of the Texan band's releases going forward.

A year later came Trail Of Dead's first masterpiece, that Madonna which began to get people talking about them more widely. Released on Merge Records, it reclaimed some of the compositions that had circulated only on cassette early in their career, adding new, downright stunning tracks. Songs like "Mistakes & Regrets", "Totally Natural", "Blight Takes All" and "A Perfect Teenhood" defined the band's musical aesthetic, positioning Trail Of Dead at the exact crossroads between Sonic Youth and Motorpsycho.

A record that arrived at just the right moment, right as Sonic Youth were seeing their iconoclastic force fade and the Norwegians were exploring new sonic directions, ranging from pop to jazz, to country, all the way to cosmic psychedelia.

Madonna filled a gap in that alt-rock niche leaning toward noise, while still paying proper attention to melodic lines, which remained well present beneath the layers of sonic onslaughts and walls of feedback.

The core of the album is "Aged Dolls", a formidable statement of intent packed into just over seven nearly perfect minutes that amount to a kind of miniature sonic symphony. The inlay is completed by the more harmonic (yet still oblique) "Clair de Lune" and "Mark David Chapman".

Interscope sensed the band's immense potential and signed them: the move first materialized with the EP Relative Ways, and a few months later with what many consider the band's absolute masterpiece, Source, Tags & Codes, released in February 2002.

Blistering attacks, aggressive riffs, a couple of more alluring tracks, a near-perfect album that set a new benchmark within the indie circuit. The sonic spectrum expanded immensely in a work that came across as fully realized in every part, both in its more abrasive aspects and in its relatively more melodic ones, which manage to emerge from the blanket of amplifiers played at full blast.

Pitchfork, the bible of the new alternative scene, awarded the record an unequivocal 10.0 on February 28, 2002 - the highest possible rating - an event that sparked the curiosity of indie fans the world over, who recognized the record's immense value. It was an event that definitively sealed the importance of webzines, tools that had by then become indispensable in helping determine a band's success in the new millennium.

The album established itself as one of the most important records of the global alt-rock scene in the early part of the new millennium: an intriguing exploration of what remains of post-hardcore combined with certain psychedelic surges, well represented by the opening "It Was There That I Saw You". Fury and grandeur mixed together as few others have managed to do, with songwriting that grew ever more complex and varied.

The furious openings of "Homage", "Baudelaire" and "Days Of Being Wild" alternate with the guitar grandeur of "How Near, How Far", "Relative Ways" and "Source, Tags & Codes", followed by the strings that close out an album made up of "intense and incredible songs, perfectly arranged and played with skill and passion. A record that will get inside you and send you back out with a simultaneous sense of loss and hope. And you will never be the same" (quote from Pitchfork).

Within "Source" there was already a process of smoothing out the rough edges, one that became even more evident on the admirable EP The Secret Of Elena's Tomb, released on the back of that success. Five unmissable tracks that delighted the band's fans, including a few attempts at experimenting with electronic textures.

While "Mach Shau" and "All Saints Day" confirmed the band's usual musical direction, the gorgeous "Crowning Of A Heart" and the acoustic "Counting Off The Days" did much to soften it, and "Intelligence" brought in electronic elements that diversified the offering, though they had no major follow-through in the band's later discography.

Pop & Prog Turns: a long transitional period

On 25 January 2005, the follow-up to "Source" hit the shops: Worlds Apart, which continued the edge-smoothing work begun with its predecessor, a record that, while perfectly respectable, never quite reached those same heights.

Worlds Apart moved Trail Of Dead definitively away from post-hardcore (the murder depicted in "Overture"?), heading instead towards generally more accessible territory, going as far as winking at britpop ("Let It Dive" is pure Oasis-style) or seeking out easy solutions via "Worlds Apart" or "And The Rest Will Follow".

The quality of the recordings improved markedly, with arrangements meticulously crafted down to the smallest detail, yet a sense of incompleteness still lingered, with those nerve-wracking interludes stretched out a little too long ("The Best", "Will You Smile Again?", which does however have a powerful opening.

The track-as-manifesto to pass down to future generations is undoubtedly "Caterwaul": an opening worthy of "Immigrant Song", guitars that recall late-period Smashing Pumpkins, a piano break that leads into an epic finale. Beatles-esque echoes surface in "Summer 91", built entirely around piano, while Pink Floyd are the clearest point of reference for "All White" (perfection in under two minutes) and for the central section of "Classic Art Showcase".

The influences keep multiplying: "Russia My Homeland" is an instrumental interlude featuring a brief cameo from classical violinist Hilary Hahn, the hazy "City Of Refuge" is the hidden dream of Air, while the album takes its leave on Indian-tinged atmospheres.

Before the release of Worlds Apart, Neil Busch was replaced on bass by Danny Wood, and a second drummer (Doni Schroader) joined the line-up. To better convey live the new, richer sound of Trail Of Dead, keyboardist David Longoria was added, later replaced by Clay Morris. As a six-piece, Trail Of Dead became even more ferocious in their live act.

In mid-November 2006, So Divided continued the band's process of normalization, ending up splitting both critics and audiences firmly in two. The smoothing of the rough edges produced sounds that were increasingly accessible and catchy, and less dogmatically "noise".

So Divided is a decidedly sweeter album than usual, through which the band aimed to broaden the scope of their sound, opening up to unprecedented influences, such as the Afrocentric percussion of "Wasted State Of Mind", played by guest Pat Mastelotto.

Having averted the break-up rumours that circulated in the wake of the commercial failure of Worlds Apart, the band released their sunniest record to date, while keeping intact their epic charge and their ambition to seek out vital sounds. Here and there a touch of excessive grandiosity creeps in, and some passages genuinely feel redundant, but on the whole the record comes across as fresh, even if much of the old tension is missing.

"Stand In Silence" is clearly inspired by Jane's Addiction, while the title track is pure brit pop à la Gallagher, complete with a central electric surge worthy of the best Motorpsycho, "Life" is a psychedelic carousel, and "Eight Days Of Hell" is the Beatles-esque circus taken to the nth playful degree.

So Divided is also a vehicle for venturing down entirely new paths, like the electric blues of "Naked Sun", complete with sparkling horns, and the melodious cover of Guided By Voices's "Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory". But the most dazzling moments come at the close, with the pop-rock of "Witch's Web" and "Sunken Dreams".

With the controversial So Divided, Trail Of Dead drew plenty of criticism, yet proved they could play like no other band on earth, shaping their sound in a thoroughly personal way, blending into it forty years of music history. A band capable of producing distinctive sonic overstructures, even through orchestral arrangements unique to their own style, enriched by a knack for catchy hooks that makes them potentially accessible to a mainstream audience.

The follow-up, The Century Of Self, marked the band's split from Interscope and their move to a self-produced setup. It was the most overtly prog record the band ever made, with all the positive and negative side effects that can entail. That approach amplified their usual weak points, namely a few too many digressions and some exasperating pauses that often slow the flow of the sonic architecture to a crawl.

And this time there's also a certain grandiosity expressed through instrumental flourishes that only dinosaurs of the caliber of Yes and Gentle Giant would still dream of attempting.

When they work with a chisel rather than a hammer they get their best results, and this time that happens on the calmer tracks of the set (the textbook example being "Luna Park"), proof that you don't always win by screaming and cranking up the amps.

Reservations duly noted, it should be said that with The Century Of Self too the band confirms itself as one of the most musically rich outfits of the new millennium, backed by technical skill and a magmatic flow of ideas that's hard to contain within anything you could canonically call a "song".

The approach halfway between sonic heft (at times even violent) and prog echoes that characterized the band's middle period makes Trail Of Dead unique on the contemporary rock scene, even though, all things considered, the best tracks here turn out to be the ones already known ("Bells Of Creation" and "Inland Sea"), having been released on the EP Festival Thyme the previous December as a tasty preview of the album.

The six-plus minutes of "Isis Unveiled" or "Halcyon Days" weigh a bit too heavily on the album's overall balance: while they do contain ideas of real interest, they come across as muddled and out of focus.

Everyone who had lowered their expectations of the band started to reconsider with the album meant to get them back on track: Tao Of The Dead. The lineup was trimmed back to four, with Reece and Keely the only surviving original members.

Trail Of Dead's project once again proves to be a major, ambitious alt-rock endeavor, tinged with the usual prog streaks, this time not particularly intrusive and confined to the final sixteen-minute-plus epic "Strange News From Another Planet".

The other side of the record opens with the barreling "Pure Radio Cosplay", a rare, effective garage hybrid sitting somewhere between Rolling Stones and Oasis. As ever, Trail Of Dead show an innate ability to handle different sounds and moods, ready to balance grandiosity with punk attitude, as on "Summer Of All Dead Souls".

But it's in exploring the middle section, from track four to track ten, that you find the choicest fruit. It's a lean sequence, among the most accessible they've ever put together, finally bearing the long-hoped-for fruit of synthesis, to the point that in this stretch of the album almost every song stays under the three-minute mark.

Seemingly relaxed compositions, yet full of tension simmering beneath the surface, ready to launch into nervy, even noisy fragments, structured so as to dive one into the next, forming an unbroken sequence, thankfully without the frills or pointless pauses that were the biggest flaw of the previous albums.

Tao Of The Dead takes the shape of a modern concept album, with the psychedelic raga "The Fairlight Pendant" acting as a bridge into the fateful sixteen minutes of the album's second part, "Strange News From Another Planet", a closing track built from five movements.

The last neo-prog flourishes before returning to more primal flavors.

A return to the roots

Trail Of Dead's virtuous run continues with Lost Songs, released in October 2012 and hailed by many as one of the best alt-rock records of the year.

Ten years on from the 10.0 awarded by Pitchfork that sealed their worldwide fame on the underground circuit, Trail Of Dead deliver their most compelling and gripping project since those days.

Having banned certain overlong passages and the dead spots that made some recent compositions lose their drive, this time they go straight to the point, cutting to the heart of the matter without wasting time on chatter, delivering twelve explosive tracks with that furious attack that marked the best moments of their early albums.

The lightning-fast assaults of the first three tracks leave you breathless, and it happens again further on with "Catatonic" and "Bright Young Things", but it's the whole tracklist that runs straight as a train, at times brushing up again against the borders of hardcore ("Up To Infinity", what a marvellous single!): a firepower that by now few expected from these Austin veterans.

There's no shortage of moments of temporary calm breaking the fury for a few seconds, as in the instrumental bridge of "Pinhole Cameras" or in the coda of "Flower Card Games".

Trail Of Dead hit the mark both on a purely musical level, trimming down the structures and letting aggressive guitars drive the sonic assaults, and on a purely lyrical one, focusing on indignant, rather politicized content, at times even outright protest (the whole album is explicitly dedicated to Pussy Riot). And even when the sound leans toward greater accessibility, the quality stays extremely high, as in the case of the title track or the closing "Time And Again", which with its Smiths-like little guitars and more carefree mood seems almost detached from the rest of the record, like a sort of bonus track.

Lost Songs is a fantastic record, well structured and without a single dull moment, played in a direct way and sung superbly, with which Trail Of Dead prove they still have plenty of substance and ideas to spare.

Two years go by and IX hits the shelves, the ninth album, which partially confirms the Texan combo's return to their roots, albeit in a less devastating way, seeking the right balance between the different sonic souls of the band led by Conrad Keely and Jason Reece. Inside there are eleven solid compositions, alternating lightning-fast outbursts with more roundly enveloping surges. It's a menu we've seen before, but one that Trail Of Dead once again know how to serve up skilfully, without ever being boring, pairing (as usual) electricity with refinement, always under the banner of epicness and emotional pathos.

There's no shortage of the classic frontal assaults that marked the band's finest work, and in that sense the standout moment takes the shape of "A Million Random Digits". But more than in the alt-rock outbursts, still powerful but this time a bit too "controlled" (the otherwise fine opening tracks "The Doomsday Book" and "Jaded Apostles"), the most intriguing episodes come where melody gets the upper hand, as in the masterful sequence "Lie Without A Liar" / "The Ghost Within", practically one song split into two parts. Everything else floats along perfectly, and spins beautifully, with the only flaw being that on IX Trail Of Dead fail to say or do anything genuinely new, tending to repeat themselves slavishly. They execute everything very well, but without any spark that might make you cry miracle. If you're one of their die-hard fans, all things considered you'll be just fine with that too.

In January 2016 Conrad Keely releases Original Machines, his solo debut: 24 tracks, almost all quite short, packed into the 55 minutes of an oblique work, extremely rich in influences and styles, reflecting its author's eclectic personality. From the disturbed melodies of "Your Tide Is Coming Out" to the ultra-bright pop of "Engines Of The Dark", "Original Machines" is a kaleidoscope of sounds and colors, far removed both from the post-hardcore and from the prog leanings that have marked many stretches of the mother band's artistic path. Among the most successful moments are the nicely crafted alt-pop of "Out On The Road", the ballad "All That's Left Is Land", the shoegaze inserts of "Inside The Cave", the epic sweep of "Nothing That I Meant", the synthetic textures of "Lost The Flow".

In a couple of moments you can recognize the Trail Of Dead blueprint ("In Words Of A Not So Famous Man" and "Before The Swim"), but Keely quickly tends to move away from it, likely aiming to make the final product as personal as possible. Original Machines, it must be said, is not without objectively skippable moments (the rather ugly "Spotlight On The Victor", the pointless synth-pop of the title track), and in some cases these are little more than sketches ("Marcel Was Here" is a divertissement of barely 34 seconds) that in all likelihood had been sitting for years in a drawer at Keely's house waiting for a comfortable spot to land. Something feels off, but if only there were more such leftovers lying around in the dusty archives of certain stars...

Pandemic times

Conrad Keely moves to Cambodia for a while, and it will take over five years for a new Trail Of Dead album, announced for January 17, 2020 under the title X: The Godless Void And Other Stories. The ferocity of their early days comes out softened by age, but the Austin band proves it can still conjure flashes of vicious rage on "Into The Godless Void", which fits neatly alongside the updated brit-pop of "Don't Look Down" (the first two tracks released, as well as the best of the bunch), the other side of the coin of what Trail Of Dead now do best. Sonic assaults, but also moments of (relatively) placid introspective searching ("Something Like This" closes with a violin that evokes hints of glorious "americana").

A certain taste for grandiosity remains unchanged, well expressed right from the opening "The Opening crescendo", a title that hardly needs explaining, and from the following "All Who Wonder". But "X" also offers pleasantly unusual moments, like the (at least half) atmospheric "Gone", or the Morrison-style speaking of "Who Haunts The Haunter", which make the journey less predictable than usual. Even though the second half of the record doesn't live up to the promise of the first, the band avoids the overlong passages that weighed down their cumbersome prog period. Longtime fans can therefore confidently reconnect with Trail Of Dead's new, reassuring direction.

After the forced break imposed by the pandemic, Trail Of Dead return in July 2022 with XI: Bleed Here Now. They stick to the essentials, without the annoying neo-progressive digressions that too often weighed down their projects, but the post-hardcore component that had first put them on the map at the start of their career is almost entirely lost (only a mild, watered-down version survives on "Kill Everyone"). This time Trail Of Dead move from the bright alt-pop of "Field Song" to the classic-rock instincts of "No Confidence" and "Water Tower", from the prog-tinged surges of "Golden Sail", "Taken By The Hand" and "Protest Streets" to the hyper-melodic passages of "Contra Mundum", the sumptuous "Millennium Actress" and "English Magic", passing through brief instrumental interludes that link the tracks together, among them the symphonic "String Theme" and "Darkness Into Light".

Bleed Here Now is a kaleidoscope steeped in a psychedelic broth, in which Trail Of Dead blend together much of the styles they've explored over the course of their career, an updated summary for our times, welcoming two internationally famous guests: Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls and Britt Daniel of Spoon. On the cover, Conrad Keely and Jason Reece are keen to specify that everything was recorded using quadraphonic technique; joining them this time were John Dowey (guitars), AJ Vincent (keyboards), Alec Padron (bass) and Ben Redman (drums, plus additional guitar lines).

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