Source Tags & Codes, the major label debut for …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead and the album they’re touring live for the first time ever to Australian audiences, has quite the legacy.
When it first emerged in 2002 it was instantly embraced as a zealous indie masterpiece by music critics desperate for an alternative to a rock mainstream that was restricted to ‘quiet is the new loud’ plodding or its ugly polar opposite: nu-metal. As serious as you’d expect of a band with such a high-brow moniker, its prestige cemented by that most rare of critical beasts, a perfect 10 Pitchfork score.
But if you needed living proof of the record’s continued influence on bands aiming for a visceral attack that belies deeper intelligence and conviction, you need only look at the spiky, cathartic rock of opening act: Adelaide’s Sincerely Grizzly.
They even concede as much; “we’re basically a Trail of Dead cover band – we stole all their shit,” frontman Josh Calligeros half-jokes in their set.
Even without that admission, it’s easy to trace a line from their serrated, agitated guitars and searing dynamics to the headliners, who they’ve previously supported on tour (meaning the admiration is somewhat mutual).
From a searing ‘21’ to the spiralling ‘Kafkaesque’, their tight, pounding punctuations and shifting moods go straight for the wiry 90s alt-rock jugular – like South Australia’s answer to Cloud Nothings.
Calligeros’ nasally, cathartic howls even have an Americanised sneer to them, which would risk cultural cringe if it didn’t feel like Sincerely, Grizzly were the only band in Adelaide (if not the country) doing this kind of caustic alt-rock so effectively.
They’re beginning to tap into their obvious potential and already producing thrilling live results – suitably warming the crowd for the raw assault to come.
Telling the sold-out room they are about to be “guinea pigs” for the first live run-through of Source Tags & Codes, Trail of Dead dive straight into the battering, sincere ‘It Was There That I Saw You’.
Cutting out the lush introductory track, ‘Invocation’, announces from the outset that this show won’t be pandering to a nostalgic recreation of a ‘classic’. The orchestral flourishes and atmospheric segues that made the recorded version a cut above are cauterised from the cacophonous but passionately delivered set. Some of those trimmings are missed, the stormy strings of ‘Another Morning Stoner’ and ‘Monsoon’ for instance, but they ratchet up the concentrated punk attack of the album’s core to compensate.
Out front, face etched in clammy effort, is the stout Conrad Keely, who’d look just as comfortable roaring onto a medieval battlefield swinging an axe as he does tearing through blunted riffage under smoke and lights as bassist Autry Fullbright II and drummer/guitarist Jamie Miller, both sporting leather jackets, flank him – lurching wildly.
But Keely looks svelte compared to his musical linchpin, the stocky Jason Reece, who begins the set punishing the drumkit, but swaps with Miller several times to front a few songs; starting with howling on the explosive ‘Homage’.
From a restless take of ‘Relative Ways’, shorn of its swagger, or cranking ‘How Near How Far’ to a seasick tempo, their delivery is coarse. Partly because they haven’t played some of these songs in nearly a decade, but mostly because Trail Of Dead’s live manifesto is to play wild, hard and fast.
Nothing however diminishes the sheer melodies and hooks at the heart of these fierce songs, from the glam rock inflected ‘Baudelaire’ or bristling ‘Days Of Being Wild’, while ‘Monsoon’ indexes their proggy ambitions, moving from ebbing growls to machine gun drum rolls and snarling guitars.
Finishing with the title track, which Keely explains is a road song lamenting the “innocence of the wasteland of the mid-West,” the group take a well-earned breather from what is a wreck-loose but winning reading of their career-defining album.
The second half however eventually proves that leaving during the interval may have proved a fonder memory of the night.
It’s not a case of Trail Of Dead’s post-Source Tags & Codes material being weaker; opening with three songs from last year’s Lost Songs proves quite the contrary, mixing heavy, opiate grooves and woollier structures but shooting them through with raw, accessible hooks – like The Stooges covering Can.
The ever-massive ‘Will You Smile Again?’ remains a set centrepiece, nixing its moody build-up for a stabbing guitar chug and a more clipped pace. But ‘Aged Dolls’ and ‘A Perfect Teenhood’ (from second LP, Madonna) descend into exercises in discord without conviction. The set becomes more a marathon as the band slink deeper into a storm of noisy, indulgent jams as the rough simplicity begins to shrink like a dot on the horizon in the gale.
A searing ‘Caterwaul’ thankfully breaks up the maelstrom, funnelling their anger into an anthemic two-chord shout-along, as Reece leaps off stage and charges through the audience like a muscular, sweaty fish tethered by his mic lead.
That momentum is undone by the closing whig-outs of ‘Totally Natural’, which proves hardest to follow, let alone enjoy. Sweat is still flowing, but more from the physically drained, droning bodies on-stage than off.
Punctuating this disconnect is the ending, where Keely trashes his amp and then tosses his guitar into the crowd with vigorous force, clocking one unfortunate punter who wasn’t quick enough to react; an unambiguous, severely punctuated end to the night.
Though probably intended as some crowning rock gesture, the fact the audience clearly weren’t expecting the instrumental projectile shows that wherever the fuck Trail Of Dead went in those last 15 minutes of sonic tripping, they forgot to bring the majority of the crowd along with them.
Setlist:
Source Tags & Codes Set
It Was There That I Saw You
Another Morning Stoner
Baudelaire
Homage
Heart In The Hand of the Matter
How Near, How Far
Monsoon
Days of Being Wild
Relative Ways
Source Tags & Codes
Set 2
Catatonic
Up To Infinity
Flower Card Games
The Spiral Jetty
Weight Of The Sun (or the Post-Modern Prometheus)
Will You Smile Again?
Clair de Lune
Aged Dolls
A Perfect Teenhood
Caterwaul
Totally Natural Except
