Source Tags & Codes

Namedrop Texan rock insurrectionists ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead and most bland broadsheet critics will immediately mention their habit for trashing their instruments and backline while ignoring their incendiary and often brilliant music. Their 2000 album Madonna contained the solid gold classic ‘Totally Natural’ – as essential a moment as hard-core has ever produced.

While always compelling, at times their bruising noise pop was little more than a good re-working of all the tricks Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Fugazi, Dinosaur Jr. and the Pixies showed the world.

However, this, their third album and first for Interscope, is a thrilling revelation of a fully-fledged and totally unique bruising rock sound.

Opener ‘It Was There I First Saw You’ cascades from the speakers, sounding like the most towering, defiant and loudest piece of music ever recorded. Explosions of noise are kept in check with intricate codas and breakdowns that lead Source Tags & Codes down just about every available sonic alleyway before blowing them all up in a fantastic ferocious fit of fury and inspiration.

A relentless barrage of noise pop missiles hurtles by with ‘Another Morning Stoner’, ‘Baudelaire’ and the stunningly impassioned ‘How Near, How Far’ and ‘Heart in the Mind of the Matter’.

A five star-studded masterpiece entitled ‘Days of Being Wild’ ups the ante to ‘Totally Natural’/’Mistakes and Regrets’ levels of brilliance as Jason Reece looses the plot with hellish hollering straight from the Black Francis/Kurt Cobain vocal school. I’ve no idea what he is getting so worked up about, but you can be 110% sure that he means it, man!

The title track rounds off proceedings on a dreamier string-laden melancholic tip, revealing yet another nugget in the Trail of Dead goldmine.

Source Tags & Codes reveals that there can be far more to this AYWKBTTOD lark than white noise and trashing instruments, or, indeed, perhaps there isn’t.