When ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead released its major label debut, Source Tags & Codes, the album was hailed as a masterpiece and named by many critics as the best album of the year. While the excellent reception must have been welcomed by the band, Trail of Dead realized it had a serious problem when its members re-entered the studio -- how could it trump its own perfect album?
The result was the underwhelming Worlds Apart, which showed the band mellowing its sound, crafting fewer epic pieces and more radio-ready pop songs. The album was disappointing to the group's indie fans, and it failed to garner much mainstream attention. In fact, the commercial sales of Worlds Apart were so disappointing that the band was on the verge of breaking up.
Yet, as their violent namesake might suggest, Trail of Dead does not give up very easily. Earlier this year, they re-entered the studio and crafted their latest full-length offering, So Divided.
As Trail of Dead's history demonstrates, the group can't seem to decide if they want to pander to their indie-fan base or try and break into the radio mainstream. The aptly named So Divided suffers greatly from this schizophrenic attitude, yielding the band's most disjointed album yet.
Sometimes, Trail of Dead's conflicting desires work in its favor, yielding some accessible material that preserves the group's original sound. Take "Naked Sun," one of the album's highlights. Starting off with a driving drum line and nasty blues riff, the song slowly builds up into a fanfare with a full brass ensemble and string section. It takes six minutes to reach its excellent finale, and not a moment is wasted. "Life" is another excellent song, kicking off with a stuttering piano and a small orchestra in the background. Compared to Trail of Dead's old material, these songs are very catchy, and they are also interesting and non-traditional.
But alongside these gems, Trail of Dead presents us with a seemingly random cover of the Guided by Voices song "Gold Heart Mountaintop Queen Directory," frenetic chamber punk ("Stand in Silence"), a Beach Boys tribute ("Eight Day Hell") and a pseudo-country piece ("Witch's Web"). Trail of Dead is obviously trying to escape from its own sound, and these failed attempts are awkward stumbling blocks in the context of the album.
Does this mean the era of Source Tags & Codes and all its complexities is over? Perhaps not. The closing seven minutes of So Divided recreate the sound that once made the band so epic -- "Segue: In the Realms of the Unreal" and "Sunken Dreams" recall quite closely the raw energy and emotion that once earned Trail of Dead so much praise.
Indeed, the best songs on So Divided show that Trail of Dead is every bit as talented and energetic as it once was. True, the album is grossly unfocused, but epics like "Naked Sun," "Life" and "Sunken Dreams" justify the album's weaker moments almost all on their own.
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