…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead

Source Tags and Codes (Interscope)
by Craig Regala

Man, I’ve listened to this …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, 20 times (really) and still can’t latch onto an angle that’s not in the press sheet. The Sonic Youth similarities circle around their Daydream Nation rec from 1988. A double album (single CD), wherein they became less abstract, warmer and more tuneful/rockin’ in the traditional sense.

It’s real good. I mean this is an a-ok one too, but when I got Trail Of Dead’s Madonna disc, it was pitched to me as “you gotta hear this: It’s like a Swervedriver tribute from some shoegazer/emo band in Indiana or some shit.” Well, they aren’t, but really, if oldsters want a bridge to this decade, this’ll do. And you young ‘uns can be proud of having a non-genre contender in a position to get a quarter million bucks in hock to the man. Unlike most of the stoner stuff I’ve been drenched with recently, there are actual tunes here. My pick to click, you ask? “Baudelaire” or “It Was There That I Saw You.”