Live review: … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Wedgewood Rooms, 14th April 2009

It sucks when the economic crisis makes you miss out on interesting bands. Well, OK, but it’s partly to blame, as my logical response to a thinner wallet is to turn up at gigs later than I used to; a dearth of crap buy-on support acts in recent years has only made that an easier decision. But then I turn up to see … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead play The Wedgewood Rooms a second time, and arrive in time to catch the last three songs by Middle Class Rut, who sounded kind of like two angry Canadians squeezing Jane’s Addition through Fugazi with a liberal greasing of reverb. It’s much more impressive than it looks on paper, I assure you.

Tonight’s headliners, however, have always suffered somewhat from the opposite effect – namely gathering ecstatic reviews and press hyperbole while never seeming to meet the expectations pinned on them by the world at large. … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead were going to be the biggest newest big new thing EVAR, or so we were told back in the dog-leg of the last Millennium. They packed out this very venue, in fact, supported by some little New York band called The Strokes. Nowadays one of those bands is a household name and the other is here for a second bout, with a smaller (and less trendy) audience. So why didn’t … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead take over the world?

Well, partly because they make the sort of music that appeals to jaded hacks like myself who’ve seen far too many identikit genre bands in their career. … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead were different, and they still are to some extent (though the rise of post-rock and retro-garage has blunted that initial novelty somewhat). But different doesn’t shift units.

And nor does self-indulgence. Perhaps if … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead had made more like The Strokes – y’know, done the fashionable scene thing, become cartoon clones of themselves, fitted into people’s expectations a little better – they might be playing bigger venues now. Venues where the sound engineers won’t give themselves a headache and a hernia trying to set up all their kit on one small stage…

They take up a lot of space, you see. Two drumkits, pianos and keyboards and synths (oh my!), up to three guitars (and/or mic stands) at once, piles of old vintage amplifiers… it’s all gotta fit somewhere, plus allow space for the band’s madcap flailing and frequent instrument swaps – another two aspects of … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead that has remained a constant, despite some roster reshuffles in recent years.

Lots of instruments means a lot of noise. Well, not noise as such, but volume, the enveloping density of sound that inevitably oozes forth from six (or is it seven? Is that guy in the band, or a tour manager, or just someone who hands instruments around between tracks?) blokes battering the hell out of their current weapon of choice with a carefree abandon that suggests that, from an artistic angle at least, small crowds are the least of their concerns. What matters is the sound, the volume, the… I don’t know, the personal exorcism? Something like that; there’s evidently a very passionate engagement with the process taking place on stage, and it has a tinge of mania about it.

Another factor contributing to the non-hugeness of … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead might be that they’re impossible to pigeonhole. They manage to sound simultaneously like a doom metal band, a punk band, a soundtracks band, a post-hardcore band, a grungy Buck Rogers space funk band and an indie prog band, while also sounding nothing like any of those descriptors whatsoever. And that’s within the space of one song, mind you, complete with vocal lines traded across the stage like volleys in a game of lyrical ping-pong and the flammed clatter of two drumkits playing at once. Oh, and the sub-bass. You really can’t miss that, especially if you’ve eaten in the last few hours.

Somewhere deep within the roaring layers of clipped signals and overdriven channels, however, there are some vivid dynamics, not to mention the occasional razor-sharp pop hook. It’s almost as if they’re secretly a bit ashamed at having done something appealing, trying to cover it up like a guilty child with a sizeable spill of Ribena on a cream-coloured carpet. Or perhaps it’s another expression of that earlier realisation – that to some extent, the audience are anathema to … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. Sure, they need people to like their music and pay to see them play – that’s business, kids – but that means, by necessity, that they can’t simply play the hour-long meandering jams that they seem to be reaching for. Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that they’re ungrateful or not into what they’re doing. It’s more that the music they make seems to intrinsically lend itself to shutting yourself in a soundproofed room and rocking the fuck out while making a colossal Ragnarok-inducing noise with your mates with little care for brevity or traditional song structure.

Gradually, … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead‘s set descends – not into chaos, but into some poorly understood mathematical district just beyond, where they then skate figure-eights between subtle and savage, fine and furious. The encore is like an art installation: everyone knows what’s going to happen, but there’s space for improvisation in the script, and everything ends with Jason Reece (or is it Conrad Keely? Or both of them? Or was that the bit before the encore?) churning out a final mangled riff on a lone guitar, wild-eyed, lost in the moment and playing to the crowd at once. It’s telling that … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead engage most directly with their audience at the end of their set rather than the beginning, in what is almost an inversion of the usual showbiz rituals. “It’s over, we made it,” they seem to say to themselves, and to us. “We survived.” So we did – and I hope they do. Just please don’t ask me to write their next press release blurb, OK?