It's ten in the morning in Austin, and Conrad Keely and Jason Reece of the band with the best and longest name in rock, . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, are gathered after a party that started twelve hours ago. The two are lucid and chipper enough, citing a robust breakfast and espresso as the reason. They are smart and smart-alecky: Like their music, they exude an unbridled enlightenment that's part academia, part punk. The band -- guitarist Kevin Allen, bassist-guitarist Neil Busch, and singer-guitarist-drummers Keely and Reece -- is fueled by a desire for change in the world and the frustrating notion that the tectonic plates of human nature don't move so easily.

Like fellow Austin rockers At the Drive-In (sadly, now defunct), Trail of Dead are aggressive and unpredictable, full of ivory-tower rhetoric and wound-up guitar squall. The members trade instruments in concert and have destroyed many a stage, out of boredom and frustration but more often as the three-dimensional rendering of their music. "It's a sacred moment," says Reece. "You just have to be there."

The band formed in Austin in 1994, though it's hard to ascertain much else about its early years, because the members like to invent their own myths as they go along. What we do know is that Source Tags and Codes is their third full-length album and that they've long favored the kind of dissonant noise rock reminiscent of the best of the Eighties underground -- early Sonic Youth and the Jesus and Mary Chain.

The band's Web site, trailofdead.com, explains their ideals, which fall somewhere between tome and tongue-in-cheek. Along with such lengthy essays as "From Counter Culture to Hegemony: Can the Underground Withstand Mainstream Collision With Modern Violence?," the band has also created a handful of equally interesting histories of their name. Take your pick: It could be a reference to a trail of blood left by a stranger who cracked his head open in front of the band's house, or it could be lifted from a Texas ghost story involving a busload of ill-fated schoolchildren and an oncoming train.

As for that hegemony thing, "We're here to put forth something substantial to guide people," Reece says. "It's nice that bands like At the Drive-In, the White Stripes and the Strokes are reaching the mainstream. We want to be part of that." Adds Keely, "When people ask us why we went from an indie label to a major label, I tell them, 'Man, if we don't do it, and no one does it, kids will continue to listen to vacuous nonsense.' "

ANTHONY BOZZA
(April 10, 2002)

Watch Trail of Dead's "Another Morning Stoner" video