Grateful Trail of Dead
OK, so it's only February, but the early favorite for the top spot on the 2005 best-of list is Worlds Apart by ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead. This Austin band gets a little pretentious with the gothic/spooky CD packaging and some of the spoken word interludes interspersed throughout Worlds Apart -- I don't know much about their history, but I bet they went to art school -- but they've toned down their thrashy, slavish Sonic Youth moves on their last two records to great effect. (2002's Source Tages and Codes is nearly as good.) They've written a batch of songs that are propulsive and powerful along with being catchy as hell (not in a pop way, yet rather memorable).
The title track fairly jangles, for them, and the lyrics strike me as being pretty trenchant:
Random lost souls have asked me
"What's the future of rock'n'roll?"
I say "I don't know does it matter?"
This and that scene
They sound all the same to me
Neither much worse nor much better
We're so fucked these days
We don't know who to hate or who to praise
Yet we consider this our suffering and pain
When we're so privileged, a fact
We all forget about as
We go whinging all over the place
How we've laughed as they shoveled the ashes
Wrath hath soured
Blood and death, we will pay back the debt
For this candy store of ours
Look at those cunts on MTV
With their cars and cribs and rings and shit
Is that what being a celebrity means?
Look, boys and girls, here's BBC
See corpses, rapes, and amputees
What do you think now of the American dream?
And our soccer moms and dads
Who raised us brats on these TV ads
I know that they sleep at night
Their conscience is intact
They've convinced themselves of that
Giving money to Jesus Fucking H Christ
How they laughed as we shoveled the ashes
Of the twin towers
Blood and death, we will pay back the debt
For this candy store of ours
As a "professional" critic, I should do a better job describing them, but I don't feel up to it. Suffice to say, the record's great. Go get it. They're coming to Chicago April 22. Not sure if I'm going to venture out, as I understand their shows are often hit-and-miss messes of noise and trashed instruments. But as long as I can't get these songs out of my head, I might as well show up.
The title track fairly jangles, for them, and the lyrics strike me as being pretty trenchant:
Random lost souls have asked me
"What's the future of rock'n'roll?"
I say "I don't know does it matter?"
This and that scene
They sound all the same to me
Neither much worse nor much better
We're so fucked these days
We don't know who to hate or who to praise
Yet we consider this our suffering and pain
When we're so privileged, a fact
We all forget about as
We go whinging all over the place
How we've laughed as they shoveled the ashes
Wrath hath soured
Blood and death, we will pay back the debt
For this candy store of ours
Look at those cunts on MTV
With their cars and cribs and rings and shit
Is that what being a celebrity means?
Look, boys and girls, here's BBC
See corpses, rapes, and amputees
What do you think now of the American dream?
And our soccer moms and dads
Who raised us brats on these TV ads
I know that they sleep at night
Their conscience is intact
They've convinced themselves of that
Giving money to Jesus Fucking H Christ
How they laughed as we shoveled the ashes
Of the twin towers
Blood and death, we will pay back the debt
For this candy store of ours
As a "professional" critic, I should do a better job describing them, but I don't feel up to it. Suffice to say, the record's great. Go get it. They're coming to Chicago April 22. Not sure if I'm going to venture out, as I understand their shows are often hit-and-miss messes of noise and trashed instruments. But as long as I can't get these songs out of my head, I might as well show up.
posted by MH at
10:49 AM
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