Interested to hear what yall think of them.. I bought Source Tags & Codes the other day and I'm starting to come around to it, although they do sound a bit punkish to me and i don't normally like too much punk.

I'm a fan of this album Source Tags &....
I've always been curious to hear their first two albums, apparently good(especially the second one). I've bought Worlds Apart last year and put it for a week or two in my stereo... Since then, I only enjoy the title song.

"Source tags &..." is very solid. Unfortunately, one of the bandmates left(the bass player I think)and they are only three on "Worlds Apart".
This album is very different: over-produced, without the inside rage that you can feel on "source tags". Maybe you'll like it better because it's not very punkish...

"Source Tags" is a good album. I think you'll find a lot of backlash for this album in here, since Pitchfork gave it a 10.0 rating, and I have yet to hear of anyone who thinks it actually deserved that score. But, it's still decent.

I'm not sure how "punk" they are. They remind me more of mid-to-late 80s Sonic Youth.

The first time I listened to Source Tags & Codes I thought it had some great moments, some that sucked. On repeated listens I've found that it really is a great album, all the things that seem silly on first listen coming together to form something gigantic, at least imo. Maybe not an album that deserves a 10.0, but I can see why it would receive such a rating. It is epic but I can see why people would be put-off quite easily by it.

I bought Source Tags & Codes used a couple weeks ago. It's a really good album. Definitely not 10.0. A couple mediocre songs ("Monsoon," "Homage") and a bunch of GREAT songs ("Another Morning Stoner," "How Near, How Far," "Days Of Being Wild," "Relative Ways"). Sometimes they sound like they're trying too hard to be epic, although 3 of them sing and bring a new dynamic to their respective songs. Again, I've only had it for 3 weeks, but I'd say it's in the 8.8-9.2 range for me.

Yea after a bunch more listens i'd say Source Tags & Codes is an extremely good album, not deserving of a 10.0 but i'd say its pretty close because it just sounds so sweeping and epic. Its a shame World's Apart seems to be such a dissapointment but I may check it out anyway to see what its worth.

Resurrecting the old thread...

I think part of the reason Pitchfork gave it a 10.0 is because it's like a best of genre thing. Let's all be honest for a moment: it's pretty easy to lump Source Tags & Codes into the same genre as bands like Thursday or Taking Back Sunday, which aren't all that great for the most part (I think, anyway.) On this album, Trail of Dead actually did this type of emotional rock music with great success, and it stands as the finest example of the genre that I've heard.

The reasons for the superior work are numerous. Most notable are the creative songcraft, better lyrics, and having a producer who knew how to make this stuff sound good instead of shoving the vocalist down your throat like most of these albums do. Not to mention that almost every song has a great hook somewhere in it.

I don't know if I'd necessarily give Source Tags & Codes a 10.0, but I can kind of see why they did.

Did Trail of Dead do anything good before Source Tags and Codes? I like that one, but I've never heard anything about their previous stuff.

Madonna (1999) is the full length before source tags and codes. It is also definitely worth a listen. They also have a self titled album from 98, but I haven't heard it.

The self-titled record is very, very poorly recorded and out of it's eight or so songs only a handful really stand out. I really like Madonna and Source Tags & Codes. In all honesty I don't see how anyone could compare them to emo trash like Taking Back Sunday and Thursday. The first thing I thought when I heard them was how similar they sounded to early Sonic Youth and Unwound. Despite the fact that their last album, Worlds Apart was easily the worst album I was actually looking forward to from last year, it's unfair to lump them in with those aforementioned "emo" bands that are in reality nothing more than screamy versions of bad pop-punk.

quote:

Originally posted by jonathanbrisby:
I don't see how anyone could compare them to emo trash like Taking Back Sunday and Thursday

Yes, I also think Trail of Dead sounds like early Sonic Youth, but...

I'm sorry, I do hear similarities between Thursday and Trail of Dead. Like I said above, Trail of Dead do a lot of things right that those bands don't do, and are in the end a much better band. But there is a lot of common ground between them. If you don't see any similarities between Thursday and Trail of Dead, I'm not sure if you've listened to enough Thursday to make that assessment. Both bands appear to draw influences from a lot of the same punk, progressive, and "emo" bands. In fact, both bands list Sonic Youth as one of their primary influences. One of them just writes better songs and isn't produced for main stream radio - well, at least for all but their last album.

I don't see what I said as an insult to Trail of Dead, really. Every genre of music has the potential to be very good. I really like Source Tags & Codes, actually. I don't know if maybe I came off as insulting the album, but that's not what I meant.

For me, they started off on the wrong foot with their name, which comes oh so close to making me want to shoot someone. Afterwards, their music seemed difficult and self-important.

I actually think it's a great name. It's the only reason I ever started listening to any of their stuff in the first place.

Yeah, I really like their name too. I think it has turned some people off though, and I have heard other people say they thought it was one of the worst band names ever. But anyway, I personally think it's a pretty cool name.

It's just the most bad-ass band name I've ever heard.

Yeah I like the name too. I don't see anything necessarily "difficult" about their music, but maybe we have different ideas/definitions of what constitutes "difficult" music.

Ihope their new album is good. I really want them to be good when they come with Blood Brothers on tour.

quote:

Yeah, I really like their name too. I think it has turned some people off though, and I have heard other people say they thought it was one of the worst band names ever. But anyway, I personally think it's a pretty cool name.

Anyone who won't listen to a band because of the name doesn't have any business listening to music.

Does anyone else here notice a strange similarity in the transition of Trail of Dead from Source Tags to Worlds Apart and how Smashing Pumpkins went from Siamese Dream to Mellon Collie? It seems that both of the bands' former albums were great while teetering on the brink of ridiculous hero worship while the second albums went overboard with highschool poetry style lyrical rants, grandiose arrangements, and vocal stylings that went from right on to intolerable high pitched whines.

And please, if you enjoyed either of the latter albums, don't go off on me. I actually like about half of Melon Collie and also some of Worlds Apart, but I also take them for what they are, attempts at something beyond both bands' reach.

quote:

Originally posted by jonathanbrisby:
I actually like about half of Melon Collie and also some of Worlds Apart, but I also take them for what they are, attempts at something beyond both bands' reach.

Yeah, I agree with you that there are similarities in the transition between the two albums. I think what makes Source Tags & Codes so good is because it's constantly on the edge of going overboard with respect to drama/epicness, but it always seems to come back to reality just in time. I'm thinking of parts like in "Relative Ways" when, during the second refrain, the guitars gradually get louder and the vocals build to a scream. But instead of letting it get out of hand, they pull it back by going back into that little breakdown that's used in the verses of the song. Those little excercises in restraint are what keep it from going overboard. It seems like ToD kinda lost touch with that during the Worlds Apart session.

Anything that tries to be as grandiose as Melon Collie is probably beyond a band's reach, with very few exceptions. Probably the only album I can think of in recent times where a band made their sound much more pompous and it actually worked is Green Day's American Idiot. Then again, Green Day was nearly the antithesis of epic before AI, so even a huge swing for them didn't put them at Melon Collie status.

Anyone think Worlds Apart kind of reminds you of American Idiot?

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