...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

Plenty of bands like to yammer on about how their newest record is a “return to their roots,” as if some undiscovered brilliance is to be found and resurrected on early demos and basement jam sessions. But in the case of ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead (or Trail of Dead from here on out, because who really wants to type all that over and over), a return to form could be just what the doctor ordered. The band’s 2002 album, Source Tags and Codes, sparked a near universal rock-critic orgasm; after that, how could their two follow up efforts match up?

But Trail of Dead is now free men, emancipated from Interscope and ready to reach back to the past while looking forward. “We finally have the artistic freedom we’ve wanted, with no pressure to create radio music, no legal department to OK our artwork, and no A&R people breathing down our necks,” says Conrad Keely, one of two primary and founding members of the band.

Although many other labels would have certainly welcomed them, Trail of Dead decided to cement their freedom by starting their own label, Richter Scale Records, as a partnership with Texas-based Justice Records. In October, they released the 5-song Festival Thyme EP as a teaser of things yet to come. The new album, The Century of Self, will be released February 17th.

The Century of Self is epic, and was clearly made without the gimlet eye of a major label A&R person overseeing it. From the soaring instrumental opener, “Giants Causeway,” to the album’s closer, “Insatiable Two,” which starts off with the sounds of a demented circus and ends with an echoing sing-along about Keely’s lack of monstrosity, the record is a work of tremendous scope and ambition. While the term “prog” is terribly overused, in this case Trail of Dead has managed that rare feat – a prog album that isn’t academic or painful.

“The new songs are very personal,” says Keely. “Some of them are autobiographical. We’re building on everything we’ve ever done, looking back on our whole career and taking a lot inspiration from our early music. We continue to evolve the concept and try to incorporate new ideas. And there was no point on the record where we were trying to write songs you’d hear on commercial radio. We know that singles are driving the market, and we don’t care.”

Then again, Trail of Dead never cared much, anyway. Friends since childhood Keely and Jason Reece started playing music in the indie rock town of Olympia, Washington. The pair then relocated to Austin, Texas, where Trail of Dead was officially born. They released a self-titled full length in 1998 on Trance Records, then hopped to Merge and put out Madonna in 1999. After a successful run opening for hipster stalwarts Superchunk, Interscope came calling, Source Tags and Codes dropped, and the rest is history.