Review: …And You Will know Us by the Trail of Dead
XI: Bleed Here Now (Dine Alone)
By Tim Stegall, Fri., July 15, 2022
Quadraphonic sound … that Seventies audio format that was basically the forerunner of surround sound, requiring special four-channel systems for full, accurate reproduction?! The differences in the types of encoding/decoding systems available, especially with vinyl records, spelled failure for it. But in quad's infancy, its grandiosity made it absolutely appealing to prog outfits – Pink Floyd even used a quad concert PA as early as 1967.
Leave it to Austin's most ambitious rock band,
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, to tilt at this particular windmill for their 11th studio album, XI: Bleed Here Now.
No, this hardly says anything about the actual music contained in these grooves. Except that the format matches it: epic, over-the-top, enormous in scale. Bleed – produced by eternal core Conrad Keely and Jason Reece, who are now backed by the instrumentally dexterous foursome of Ben Redman, Alec Padron, John Dowey, and AJ Vincent – is absolutely 21st-century progressive rock, with strings, synths, keyboards galore, and a wash of massed acoustic guitars underpinning virtually every song, even when electric guitars blast over the top. The dynamic range runs from whisper-quiet (like the gently fingerpicked "Growing Divide" where Spoon's Britt Daniel provides a vocal assist on lines like "Don't let the sight of the growing divide make you give up on humanity") to sheer bombast, with lyrics about death and abandoned cities, clearly written during the darkest days of COVID-19, reminding you when this 22-song journey was made. "Look down empty avenues/ To bleed a way out," rues the upbeat, piano-driven "Field Song," before emerging defiant and hopeful: "Just because we're stagnant doesn't mean we're beaten down." "Kill Everyone," a rampaging punk rocker, snarls about "a black death, a black plague," then lamenting, "It's the same war, son/ Why did we have to kill everyone?" Even listening in fold-in stereo, the quad mixes are bold and rich, befitting the scale of Trail of Dead's accomplishment.
