...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Source Tags & Codes

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Source Tags & Codes.
8.6

This album really didn't do anything for me until about four-and-a-half minutes in. I was actually annoyed a little bit until Conrad Keely started singing in "It Was There That I Saw You." Something about his vocal melody really tied it together, and it didn't abate into "Another Morning Stoner." In fact, the album as a whole picked up considerably after the weak opening, and as it wore on I grew to appreciate it more and more.

(After doing a bit of research on the album on Wikipedia, I realized that I have the international release, which includes the irritating intro "Invocation," as well as an interlude called "Life is Elsewhere." All this really does is lend credence to my suspicion that Europeans have pretty terrible taste in just about everything).

Source Tags & Codes really is something else though. It's an epic, thoroughly engaging album, one that, while not deserving of Pitchfork's attempts to coronate it as a modern classic, is definitely one of the better albums to worm out of Austin, Texas, in decades.