Track Listing

1. It Was There That I Saw You
2. Another Morning Stoner
3. Baudelaire
4. Homage
5. How Near How Far
6. Heart in the Hand of the Matter
7. Monsoon
8. Days of Being Wild
9. Relative Ways
10. After the Laughter
11. Source Tags and Codes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18757 in Music
• Released on: 2002-02-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Amazon.com
With their first major-label release, Austin's most destructive live act will hopefully move from notoriety for trashing their instruments to appreciation for the way they use them. Source Tags & Codes is the third release from the band with the long name, and it is a volatile time bomb of emo, art rock, and post rock that explodes with emotion on every song. The walls of guitar effects and tense, heated vocals provide the band's driving aggression, but they soften the blows with bouts of dark melody, even adding strings and piano in places. The album should please fans of bands such as At the Drive In, Unwound, and Les Savy Fav, but Source Tags & Codes weighs in as heavier, noisier, and, in places, more tormented and beautiful than those bands. With enough twists in its movements to ward off any signs of predictability, Source Tags & Codes is an impressive rock collage that exposes new musical layers with each listen. --Jennifer Maerz

Customer Reviews

4.5 stars for the music + half for the name
I had heard before I listened to "source tags & codes" that it was a loud album, but eve after being forewarned I found my head snapping back at what I heard when I threw it in my stereo. As someone who regularly listens to grindcore, I know loud, and this album leaps out of your speakers with a sheer volume that's hard to match in any genre. Right from the first fierce howl by Conrad Keely, backed by a pummeling wall of guitars, on the opening "It Was There That I Saw You," I knew I was in for a scintillating ride, and this album didn't disappoint from there on out.

It's easy to be hooked right away by how freakin' loud "source tags & codes" is, but that's only a part of what makes it such a great album. After the initial adrenalin rush had faded and I was done banging my head, I started to notice just how much craftsmanship went into these songs. I've heard some comparisons to Sonic Youth, and those certainly aren't far off base, as the dual guitar interplay, flailing drum assaults, and extended instrumental passages that characterized such Youth classics as "Daydream Nation" are very much in evidence here. However, it would be a tad too simplistic to write these guys off an SY clone, for AYWKUBTTOD distinguish themselves from their forebears with leaner songwriting and a much more ferocious overall approach.

While there are some peaceful, even pretty moments on "source tags and codes," they serve mainly to provide a foil for the sonic onslaught that's more often on display. After the hard-pounding rush of the opener, things get even better with the awe-inspiring "Another Morning Stoner," which augments the band's destructive guitar sound with the kind of enormous, towering melody that can bounce around in your head for days. The primal screamers "Homage" and "Days of Being Wild" make some of the best use of dynamics since the Pixies' heyday, while "Monsoon" builds from a quiet beginning to a series of swirling crescendos. Even the hook-laden "Relative Ways" and the concluding title track, while perhaps the two catchiest numbers on the disc, are filled with screaming guitar lines that loudly assault your ears.

In all places, though, "source tags and codes" is an album of contrasts, sort of like the "album you play to get your blood pumping" and the "album you play to mellow out" combined into one. AYWKUBTTOD have managed with this release to position themselves as one the best modern rock bands out there right now, and they should only get better as they grow more into their own sound. And if you like these guys, be sure to check out McLusky, Hot Snakes, the Dismemberment Plan, and Modest Mouse for similar quality material.

The Soundtrack to My Own Teenage Riot
When I was 17, I discovered Source Tags & Code almost accidentally. I think I stumbled across it while trying to get into At the Drive-In (which never happened), the band who a lot of people say the Trail of Dead owe their sound. Very shortly after that, I started to smoke pot. The two things are completely unrelated except for the fact that this became my favorite album to listen to when high, and I listened to this album almost everyday for more than a year. It seemed to embody everything I felt and looking back, it really seems to define that whole era for me. I remember listening to it and worrying what exactly I wanted to major in in college - which I imagined would shape the whole future of my life. I remember listening to this for perhaps the 79th time, while particularly baked, and outlining a review for this album in which I explained how it was a brilliantly subtle concept album with a story arc describing the ego of any and every teen in America (I won't get into it, but I still somewhat believe it), and wondering why it wasn't the most popular album in the country, and stating for sure that it would be remembered as ahead of it's time.

"It Was There (That I Saw You)" couldn't be better for the first song. A quiet, simple guitar riff quickly joins the sound of a distant tv and what could only be described as space static. No sooner than the 15 second mark, the bass distinctively drops in half a beat before the loud, distorted, chiming punk chords and Conrad lets out one verse and a chorus about an old girlfriend ("but as time went on, I wondered what went wrong, I wondered what became....of you...") which segues into a great bridge/fuzzed out guitar jam that builds and builds until it bursts back into verse two with another bass dropout and even faster, louder, chimier (is that a word?) guitars and a climactic repeat of the chorus. This sets up the tone for the whole album, as most of the songs go by that same formula of Intro-verse-chorus-cool breakdown-verse-chorus-climax, some more intensely, others less so. I actually didn't like this song so much at first only because it's sung in what sounded to me like the whiny Good Charlotte pop-punk that was circulating at the time.

"Another Morning Stoner" is, even on the first listen, immediate a standout. The two guitar intro, one playing a riff right up there with Cobain's best, the other adding cool atmospheric fills grabs your attention and leads in to melodic, buzzsaw guitars on the verse. I think it was the second single.

"Baudelaire" has fast power chords and lyrics about the poet most famous for writing about boredom being the greatest sin. The fact that this is one of the most forgettable songs on the album is a compliment.

"Homage" is exactly what it's name implies. It's an homage to post-punk screamo bands such as Fugazi and Minor Threat. It's very fast paced and great if you were ever a fan of post-punk. If not, you won't like it.

"How Near How Far" is immediately another album highlight. The mellow, slowly crashing drums combining with a great echo-y guitar riff open the song then the pace is quickened for the verses, until it returns towards the end and builds while the refrain "how near, how far, how lost they are" is repeated about 15 times. This song is so amazing it will be playing in your head for a week after hearing it.

"Heart in the Hand of the Matter" begins with the coolest opening lyrics since "I was born in a crossfire hurricane" from Jumping Jack Flash. You just have to respect any song that begins with "ride the apocalypse" and a continues on with"there's nothing that could be done/we've lost all control/I walk in the shadows of your tortured realm/and I'm so damned/I can't win/with my heart in my hands again." At first, this song didn't really grab me. But, after actually listening to the lyrics I really came to think this is easily up there with the best songs on the album. "Heart in the Hand" leads perfectly into "Monsoon," which must be the most epic song of ToD's career so far. The great lyrics continue with such gems as "roll of thunder like a voice that commands/raindrops fall like the blood from your hands/pray to a God but I doubt that he's listening/this world's a gutter that he likes to piss in/millions of people quietly sleep/dreaming of deserts as the puddles run deep." Musically, "Monsoon" wears it's Sonic Youth influence right out on it's sleeve. James Reece even sounds like Lee Renaldo here.

"Days of Being Wild" blasts off right out of the gate. It's the loudest, fastest, and as far as I'm concerned, best song on all of `Source Tags'. The lyrics about "all night amphetamines" being "alive in jail/alive and well" fit perfectly being shouted over the hammering drums and guitars that sound like their trying to impersonate the sound of metal being viciously torn apart. The song climax's with a chorus being desperately shouted with the poem "Graffiti Deposition" read over it, ending in the line "a middle finger to the institution" and it all just works so surprisingly well.

"Relative Ways" was the first single, which of course means in this case that it's the most straightforward rock song here. Again awards for cool lyrics must go out for "our electric guitar hangs to our knees/got a couple of verses I can barely breathe/it's alright it's ok/it's coming together in relative ways" as well as the repeated lines "it's ok/I'm a saint/I forgave your mistakes".

"After the Laughter" is a instrumental interlude that continues the riffs from "Relative Ways" but quietly and on piano. It's a perfect comedown and a perfect lead-in to "Source Tags & Code" which is one of those perfect album closers where the guitars and lyrics just seem to put you into that totally warm, happy, nostalgic mood without fail every time you listen to it. There's nothing more to be said about this song, you can't not like it. Stick around after the song is over because after a few seconds you hear a very unlikely beautiful violin concerto which is the album's true coda.

Now I'm 21. Finally, I've answered all those questions I used to ask myself while stoned and blasting this in headphones. With the last grains of teenager-dom finally washed away, I still find myself coming back to this CD quite often. So, I'm starting to think that my very first impressions of `Source Tags' were totally right. This isn't just some teen angst [...] you listen to when you're young, then forget. This album is truly one of the greats, one that will be up there with those few albums that have seemed to define entire sections of your life. Albums that when played, have the power to transport you back to all the good times, all the bad times, and at the same time be an excellent album musically and lyrically. `Madonna' before this laid the groundwork, "the St. Elena's Tomb" EP hold's more of the same type of sound found here, before `World's Apart' blew ToD's possibilities wide open with a blend of different song styles. But none of those albums can touch the landmark greatness of `Source Tags & Codes."

Already the Album of 2002
I was very nervous when i first heard ..And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's new album, Source Tags and Codes. After a stellar second album, Madonna, i expected TOD to stay on Merge records and make another indie album. But when i found out that they had signed on to Interscope Records, i was shocked. I could see them guest appearing in Limp Bizkit videos, and having Fred Durst bust some rhymes for the chorus of their new hit single,"Da Partee iz Lyve!". I expected a failure.

How wrong i was.

I cannot even begin to tell you how stellar this album really is. The dense orchestration, layering of sound, and the overall skill and passion of Conrad Keely, Jason Reece, Neil Busch, and Kevin Allen, makes for one of the most engaging and emotionally draining albums i have ever experienced. Here's a track-by-track review of the album.

1. It Was There That I Saw You
A friend told me that he thought this song was too emo. How can a song be classified as emo when a string section and timpanies are present, to add to Conrad Keely's(he wrote this one) much improved vocal stylings. The beautiful soft mileu to this song, combined with the ravaging guitars that bookend this song, make it a classic. 5/5

2. Another Morning Stoner

The First Sign of the fantastic riffs that will come out of this album first appear in this song. A whirling, brooding piece that ends with the call-response shout, "What is Forgiveness\ it's just a dream\ what is forgiveness\ it's everything." Fantastic. 4.5/5

3. Baudelaire

Wow. Bassist Neil Busch's songwriting has come a long, long way. This on, curiously named after a French 1800's poet, has a great stuttering, recurring riff, and some killer bass drum stomping sound. One of my favorites. 5/5

4. Homage

Miss Trail of Dead's more raucous, apocalyptic thrashers like Perfect Teenhood and Richter Scale Madness? Here ya go. This one definitely shreds the speakers. The highlight is the atonal feedback "solo". Jason Reece is a madman. 4.5/5

5. How Near How Far

Another jaw-dropping midtempo tune with astonishing drum work and inspired lyrics by Conrad Keely. After the chanting is finished halfway through the song, Conrad storms back with more fury. A brilliant song. 5/5

6. Heart in the Hand of the Matter

All right, here we go. This is quite possibly one of the greatest songs that i have ever heard in my life. I'm quite serious. The stacatto piano and the surges of violins drove me back the first time i heard this. I can't even describe the damn thing correctly. It's godsent. Just listen to it yourself. You'll see. All i can say is "Ride the Apocalypse." Reece is God. 6/5

7. Monsoon

This one comes out of nowhere. The crunching riff, the soft breakdown in the middle, an Neil Busch's FANTASTIC vocals. My band and i are trying to figure out a cover of this one. This rockin' song is sure to please. "The Rivers are runnin' Red, With their Blood!" 5/5

8. Days of Being Wild

Another one of the more hardcore-inspired cuts on this album. This one rocks quite efficiently, at 3:29 or so. But Reece comes back with another killer. This is one of the songs on the album that just makes you feel good about the state of rock, even though the situation is dire, our boys of the Trail are giving hope. 4.5/5

9. Relative Ways

The first single off of Source Tags and Codes, and a damn, damn good song. The off-kilter rhythm and the simple riff work like magic, to produce a showstopper. Conrad is probably one of the best lyricists in rock right now, and his passionate cries of "It's Comin' Together in Relative ways now!!" make this one simply grand.

10. After the Laughter

A nice little segue using the piano riff from Relative Ways, with a distant radio in the background, and some beautiful harmony singing. Nice. 4/5

11. Source Tags and Codes

The mother of all album closers. This one may be the most simple of the songs on this album, but it may be the most effective and thought provoking. The string post-coda bit at the end is dripping in eloquence and beauty. Beauty. 5/5

Well, there you go. THE BEST NEW BAND IN ROCK. Forget the Strokes, with their Television and Velvet Underground posing. The Trail has made music on this album that will stand the test of time. Source Tags and Codes is one of my favorite albums of all time.