Just as the earliest recordings of ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead betrayed a great stylistic debt to the tuneful dissonance of Sonic Youth, their 2002 debut for Interscope, Source Tags & Codes, highlighted another important lesson learned from their alt-rock forebears: How to trade up to major-label patronage without losing your cool. Rather than compromise Trail of Dead's punk-prog grandeur, Source Tags' bolstered recording budget allowed them to fully exploit those dichotomies, coaxing the melodic beauty out of the discord while infusing the band's signature crash-endos with apocalyptic heft.
But if the early chapters of Trail of Dead's history defied the usual indie-to-major sell-out script, their more recent history has sadly reverted to the usual clichés: First came the dismissal of bassist Neil Busch (the band's unsung George Harrison/John Entwhistle figure) amid rumors of drug abuse, followed by two increasingly overblown albums (2005's Worlds Apart and 2006's So Divided) that steered the band into "November Rain" power-ballad territory and failed to capitalize on Source Tags' momentum. And where Trail of Dead shows used to climax with the orgiastic destruction of their equipment, they were starting to take their frustration out on each other. In the context of this unfortunate decline, the band's fall 2007 tour with "Metalocalypse" cartoon thrashers Dethklok would thus qualify as their Spinal Tap/Puppet Show nadir.
However, like the breakdown/rebuild structures that figure in so many of their songs, Trail of Dead are positioning themselves for, if not an all-out comeback, then at least a back-to-basics rethink. This past summer saw core songwriters Conrad Keely and Jason Reece playing a handful of shows in a duo format for the first time since the band's initial 1994 formation, while the inevitable parting of ways with Interscope has inspired Trail of Dead to launch their own label, Richter Scale, presumably named for the song ("Richter Scale Madness") that first introduced the band to the world 10 years ago. But if these developments hint at a return to the slash'n'burn guitar carnage of the band's 1998 self-titled debut, the first Richter Scale release, the Festival Thyme EP, tells a different story. As a preview of the band's as yet untitled sixth album, the four-song EP (available in mp3 and vinyl formats) still finds Keely leaning more heavily on the piano than the distortion pedal, and wild-card singing drummer Reece is once again relegated to a silent-partner role. But at least it shows Trail of Dead can effectively deliver the pomp without the pomposity.
Opening track and new-album teaser "Bells of Creation" (presented here in an alternate "machete mix") is emblematic of the band's transitory state: the verse melody echoes Source Tags' "It Was There That I Saw You" and the storming, mid-section surge sounds like another "Another Morning Stoner", but the stately presentation (ringing piano chords, martial drumbeat) and whiny, overdriven chorus ("I felt like Saaattaaann...") are more beholden to the band's recent modern-rock-oriented M.O. "Inland Sea" (presented in "edit" form) follows a similar piano-ballad-gone-ballistic template but doesn't overdo either part of that equation, as Keely's ascending vocal line nicely complements the song's upward sweep, and the climactic instrumental build feels like a natural product of the song's momentum rather than a grafted-on mid-song detour.
Festival Thyme's vinyl version replaces "Inland Sea" with an unlikely cover of the Replacements' "Within Your Reach", Trail of Dead's second attempt at fleshing out a lo-fi indie-rock classic (following So Divided's take on Guided by Voices' "Gold Heart Mountaintop Queen Directory"), but arguably the EP's biggest curveball is the its track. Living up to its medieval moniker, "Festival Thyme" is a spirited folk stomp that's a close cousin to Sigur Rós' recent handclap-happy single "Gobbledigook", and it succeeds where Trail of Dead's recent forays into proggy pop have faltered, favouring a playful, campfire presentation over heavy-handed orchestration. It's too soon to say if the track signals a new avenue for Trail of Dead to explore, or if it's just a one-off lark; Festival Thyme's closer, "The Betrayal of Roger Casement & the Irish Brigade", is a typically calamitous instrumental that returns us to the piano-stoked melodrama of the EP's first two tracks, but the gaudy, almost Elton John-like (c.f. "Funeral for a Friend") flourishes and phased-out, Eddie Hazel-esque wah-wah noodling are kept in check by an undercurrent of corrosive guitar textures. Grammar buffs will recognize that the song is named after the Irish nationalist who was tried for treason in 1916 and "hung by a comma" due to poorly punctuated English law, and perhaps Trail of Dead feel like they too have been judged far too harshly in the court of rock-crit opinion in recent years. If that's the case, then Festival Thyme shows there's still enough fight in them to earn a reprieve.
