(this is from february, 2012)
Strong Effort (4/5)
yes. seriously.
i'll remind you again that i felt totally beyond rock music in the early 2000s. i was still listening to a few 90s rock bands like tool, the smashing pumpkins and weezer but my favourite records in 2002 were the most recent offerings from acts like do make say think, gybe!, tortoise and labradford. if you were to ask me about the trail of the dead, i would have said something about nu-metal sucking. nor did i have time for vacuous trendy stupidity like the strokes.
in time, though, the trail of the dead slowly seeped in. i began to develop a sort of muted admiration for them, without ever being able to get into anything they produced. stop the presses: i'm actually of the opinion that each record since their over-rated melodically challenged 2002 'classic' has been a step forward for the band. towards what? well, something substantial. what? i don't know. it never really seemed clear where they were going, only that they weren't using what they had in front of them very effectively.
even in 2002, they had the roar. they had the intensity, the passion, the emotion. what they never had going for them were *songs*. nor where they able to jam very well. if you were to analyze their work as existing in the post-rock sphere, you'd have to write it off as excessively lame. the drums were there, but the melodies weren't. if you were to analyze it as alternative rock, you'd have to write it off as excessively lame. no solos, no riffs; what's the use in that? i suppose it worked alright as emo, but fuck emo. slowly, though, they got better, coming to a turning point in 2009 and crossing the divide with this record, finally, in 2011. yes, i'm going to say it: this is their first substantial disc. it's also the first one not to chart in a long time...
the disc doesn't deviate substantially from their past work, or at least it would seem like it doesn't on first listen. however, if you listen to their first record and then this one you'll hear a massively improved band on this disc. see, though, that's sort of the point; it's a long, slow evolutionary process that's finally come into fruition here.
the difference is that these songs are simply better, regardless of what angle they're approached from: attention, detail, intensity, theatre, scope, coherence, continuity. the record is also largely free from the kinds of radio hits and aimless pretentious nonsense that dragged down some of their earlier records.
so, if you were always kinda iffy on these guys but always thought they had the potential to be better, you may want to check this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk4v-W1_cEs
