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Magazine - 2000 by Dorian Lynskey | |
When
they met...it was murder. Trail of Dead formed in America's execution capital
and have been making killling music ever since. You know you want a piece of
them... And You will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead can't agree on the most disastrous show they've played, but they've narrowed it down. There's the time in Salt Lake City when after a particularly bad set, they poured bottles of urine over the sound desk, cut the power cables and made a hasty exit. "We were kind of malicious," they concede. "But it was karma". Then there was Dallas, where the soundman took such exception to their adrenalised stage show that he climbed onstage and battered singer-guitarist-drummer Conrad Keely over the head with flashlight. "Apart from the fact that I had a head injury, that was a good show," reflects Keely. "It was an electric moment". BEFORE ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES, ALL THAT Britain knew about this Texan quartet was that they had a very long name and a reputation for breaking things. They came onto the ATP second stage dressed as mods in the middle of the afternoon to the belligerent voice of a young Pete Townshend screaming over the PA: "This is a fucking rock'n'roll show". He was right, too. Twenty minutes of instrument-swapping [co-founders Keely and Jason Reece alternate between drums, guitar and vocals), star-jumping and amp abuse later, the set climaxed with a drum kit dismantled and Keely swinging his guitar over his head, repeatedly howling "Fuck you" over a blitzkrieg of white noise. Disciples of Tortoise, they clearly are not. Their set mixes the destructive showmanship of The Who, the sonic catharsis of Sonic Youth and the militant zeal of MC5. Quite simply ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead are the most beautifully chaotic, thrillingly contradictory and downright sexy rock'n'roll band of the year. Now they've secured a deal with Domino for the UK release of second album, 'Madonna', which sounds like Pavement's college-grad wit and angular melodies spliced onto the Stooges' nosebleed riffola. They're natural heirs to the niche Of well-read art-rock terrorists vacated by the Manics the day Nicky Wire got his first Dyson. Then there's the name. It sounds like a '50s zombie film, or a terrorist cell building bombs in dank basements, or a slogan the Manson family might have scrawled in blood on Sharon Tate's walls. The official explanation is simply that they wanted to outdo the moniker of their friends' band Behead The Lord, No Prophet Shall Live. So where does the name really come from? "Which story do you want?" Busch grins. "I like the Cherokee word, Aywkubttod. It's the ritual where they put spikes through their nipples and hang from an oak tree in the wind as penance for all their sins. It was really a lot longer. You see the dot dot dot? We had to edit out the first part of it!" "I think it was The Clouds That Fondle Jagged Crags And Raging Storms Conspire...," Keely adds. "Then Fiona Apple tries to outdo us, naming her record with a 90-word poem, Busch moans. "You know," says Reece thoughtfully. "We're going to have to kill her" IF TRAIL OF DEAD ARE TO BE BELIEVED [WHICH they're probably not, they were born and raised in Plano, a town 20 miles outside Dallas. "Everything's just one in Plano," says Keely. "One church, one street, one house." Actually, according to the town's official website, Plano boasts 25 churches, a population of a quarter of a million and a booming economy. But it also looks dull as mud so no wonder its inhabitants embellish the truth. Trail Of Dead claim that they met in the church choir, after their parents encouraged them to play music to keep them off drugs. "That didn't work," says Busch. "But at least we still play music. "All the other bands in Plano are choir bands or dead." says Reece solemnly. "Kids were bored and heroin started to be this big deal. That's a reason why we left, too, cos we're totally against heroin." Pause. "Unless you've got any." Only somewhere like Texas could have produced a band as uniquely twisted as Trail of Dead. This state kills more convicts than any other ["that's why we named our band," Busch lies] and clings most aggressively to its frontier past. It's where David Koresh's cult holed up, battled the FBI and finally set fire to themselves. According to Trail Of Dead that's a very Texas thing to do. "It's the fear, I think" says Busch, "There's the fear that you could go into the woods and never come back. It feeds people's passion for doing things. Texas is the only state that used to be its own country. Austin is definitely a liberal oasis in a vast conservative desert. The rest of Texas is good ol' boys in cowboy hats driving BMWs." Keely and Reece wound up in Austin in 1995 and, inspired by the collective ethos of Olympia's Beat Happening, began to fashion Trail of Dead. After recruiting Allen and Busch, they signed to Trance Syndicate, not a Texan outpost of glowstick-friendly choonage but the alt-rock label funded by Butthole Surfers' King Coffey. They banged out their eponymous 1998 debut album in two days. Fellow Austin bands shared a desire to get up people's noses and put on a good show. The most entertaining were the Primadonnas, a synth-pop duo called Otto Matic and Julius Seizure who pretended to be from Sussex so they could call the Audience "Fucking Americans". When Princess Di died, they held a bizarre tribute show for a laugh. Disaster, when it came, struck twice. First Trance Syndicate closed down, and then thieves raided all the equipment from their van. Unfazed, they made second album 'Madonna' and signed to Merge, home of Lambchop and Magnetic Fields. A reference to both Ms Ciccone and Jesus's mum, 'Madonna' takes a lyrical road-trip through the mythology of Americana, with a plastic Jesus on the dashboard and a copy of Don DeLillo's Underworld in the glovebox. Topics covered include joyriding serial killers, religious icons and, on 'Mark David Chapman', obviously, the killer of John Lennon. "We're all extremely interested in religion and beliefs, and also the pop side," says Busch. "People construct their lives in relationship to religious ideals and then people also construct their lives like a consumer identity." Oblivious to the phrase's shudder-inducing connotations, the band proudly declare that 'Madonna' is a concept album. "Public Enemy's 'Fear Of A Black Planet' is a concept album," Reece retorts. "'De La Soul is Dead'. 'Sergeant Pepper's'. Our next album is definitely going to be a concept album." "It's about a small child who becomes bionic and grows up to hate the world, but in the end he loves everyone," Busch improvises. One reviewer, picking up on 'Madonna's highbrow concept and references to comic books, JRR Tolkein and Greek mythology, dared to describe the band as four nerdy guys. "Yeah," Reece snorts. "Four nerdy guys who can kick your fucking ass!" DURING THE PHOTOSHOOT, ASS-KICKING TRAIL OF Dead sing Backstreet Boys songs, fight and read bits out of a Scottish-English dictionary. Since hanging out with Mogwai at Camber Sands, they're obsessed with getting "pished". "We wanna be a Scottish band," Reece decides, "We're gonna move to Glasgow and hang out with Mogwai and fucking do a bunch of crime together. We'll hang out in burnt-out old stone churches and create a death indie scene." Then he picks up a chair and swings it perilously close to Busch's head screaming "I'll fucking kill you!" And You Will Know Them By The Trail Of Dead: they have a very long name and they like to break things. And then some. | |
