... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - 'Worlds Apart' (Interscope)
4/5
By: Toby L
More overblown and filling than an inbred, moustached, fifteen-years-running burger-chomping champ based in the band's own 'steak-house' county Austin, Texas, on fourth LP 'Worlds Apart', ... Trail Of Dead both discard every iota of pretentious pomp that defined their past ravages of dirge-y, dark, Sonic Yoof-y art-punk and yet - bizarrely, conversely - affirm it. This was, after all, always a band of contradiction and deeper meaning.'
For, this time, as hinted in most recent, prior singles 'Relative Ways' and 'Another Morning Stoner', it's not just about creating a f**king heaving, dizzying and endlessly intricate maze of horrendous ear-obliteration, using guitars, bass and drums as the only means, anymore. 'Worlds Apart' is the darkest pop record you'll ever hear. Traces of The Pogues and Bach shiver through its hour, but it's wrapped in the same grotesque/beautiful packaging format we've become accustomed to in our decade-long affair with the newly streamlined three-piece; the prog artwork, documenting great battles and trauma, couldn't be any less appropriate.
'Look at those c**ts on MTV...! Is that what being celebrity means?!'
Ooh, I say. And you haven't even got to the references of the Twin Towers and 'Jesus f**king H Christ' yet. All set to a contemporary pop structure. Doubled-up vocals bellow the chorus on the title-track, and we forget we're singing along to the most potentially offensive, outspoken diatribe AYWKUBTTOD have thus far conjured. It's especially genius when you add to the mix the shimmering, rousing beauty of a philosophical, finest song yet, 'The Rest Will Follow' - with its simply impossible, incessant drum and keyboard rolls, and hugging verse - and the clunking tease of opener proper 'Will You Smile Again?', a track whose mesmerising, hypnotic intro and outro sequences are so epic and mammoth, we feel dazed and bemused, padded out only with a tense, terse, mantra-like series of taunts from frontman Conrad Keely that make us yearn for the warmth of the womb once more.
Then drummer-boy Jason Reece has a go with the comparatively restrained screamo-waltz of 'Caterwaul', anthemic in its shout-out - if incomprehensible - chorus. And skipping past the bizarre Soviet homage, or shoe-gazing slumber of 'Let It Dive', the next bouts of mastermind exploits emerge in the gospel-bolstered expanse of 'All White' and brittle closer, 'The Lost City Of Refuge' - both completely, utterly as far detached from any Trail Of Dead archetype as we could imagine (save for a potential Keely-Reece hip-hop concoction; let's pray that one never materialises).
Destined to be criminally misunderstood (like the rest of their work and earth), and almost self-righteous in its presently unrivalled accomplishment, ... Trail Of Dead manage to be all of arresting, arrogant and vital in the same listen. Worlds Apart: too true.
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