Day After Day #269: Another Morning Stoner

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Another Morning Stoner (2002)

With some artists, the hype that precedes them can be too much. They get so built up that you're bound to be disappointed when you actually hear the music in question. This was not the case with ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, the Austin post-punk act with the unwieldly name. I didn't know much about them in early 2002 when my friend and former co-worker Dave Brigham raved about seeing the band at TT the Bears in Cambridge opening for Explosions in the Sky and blowing the roof off the place. And once I finally checked Trail of Dead out, I got it.

The band was formed in 1994 by childhood friends Conrad Keely (vocals, guitars) and Jason Reece (drums, vocals), who each formed bands in Olympia, Washington, where Kelly was attending Evergreen State College. Keely and Reece later moved to Austin and started playing as a duo called You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. They added guitarist Kevin Allen and bassist Neil Busch and then lengthened their name to ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, which may or may not have been taken from an ancient Mayan ritual chant.

Trail of Dead released a self-titled album in 1998 on Trance Syndicate, and later signed to Merge after Trance Syndicate folded. They released Madonna in 1999 and opened for Superchunk on tour. In 2001, they signed to major label Interscope Records, releasing an EP called Relative Ways in 2001 and their major-label debut album, Source Tags & Codes in 2002. A big part of the hype machine was generated by a Pitchfork review, which gave the album a 10.0 score. At the time Pitchfork reviews were very influential and it gave the band a huge boost, although maybe too much of one; Keely called the rating "preposterous."

Whatever the case, between that and Briggy's enthusiasm about the band's performance (which reportedly included the band throwing their guitars into the club's low ceiling), I was interested. After hearing "Another Morning Stoner," I was hooked. 

The song is melodic but verging on the edge of exploding, building up in intensity with Reece's explosive drumming and outbursts of guitar. 

"Are you asleep, are you in a dream/The copper shades of morning/Distant lights beckon and fade/Unwritten songs of another day/I fear that you would never be/Every song in the world for me/I took your hand, led you astray/You cursed the worlds I longed to save/Is heaven to you a perfect place/The look of sorrow on a sufferer's face/A field of lives to sow, are you in a dream?/And to reap/That some of us will never see?"

Trail of Dead's energy mirrors that of its Texas counterparts At the Drive-In, albeit with a different sound. "Another Morning Stoner" builds majestically with a string section as Keely pushes his voice to its limits.

"Why is it I don't feel the same?/Are my longings to be blamed?/For not seeing heaven like you would see/Why is a song the world for me?/What is forgiveness?/It's just a dream/What is forgiveness?/It's everything."

Not everyone felt the same way about Source Tags & Codes. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gave it a "dud" rating, but that fucking guy hates everything. Seriously, in researching the 269 songs I've written about for this feature, so many of them were trashed by Christgau, which honestly made me like them more. 

The entire album is a masterpiece, with classics like "It Was There That I Saw You," "Relative Ways" and "Homage" among the standout tracks. The problem with making a classic album so early in your career is the pressure to top it, and Trail of Dead have never been able to. That's not a criticism. Everything came together for them on Source Tags & Codes. In the 22 years since, they've released eight more albums that have all been good to very good, but none have reached the transcendent level that Source Tags did. It's nothing to be ashamed of; many bands never reach those heights at all. 

Trail of Dead's most recent album was 2022's XI:  Bleed Here Now, which was released with quadraphonic mixing. The band had posted on its Instagram page "Trail closed," which led people to think the band may have broken up. But the band recently announced that it's opening a November date in Austin for Interpol, the first Trail of Dead performance in two years. So that's something.