Being in an industry for over 25 years is impressive in any field, but when you see a band repeatedly outdoing themselves and reinventing themselves for that period of time, it is even more impressive than usual.
The music industry is constantly shifting, and in the current period where singles rule all, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead has decided it is time to rediscover a historical format and put their focus on a quadraphonic record sound on their eleventh album, XI: BLEED HERE NOW, out July 15 on Dine Alone Records. We had the pleasure of getting to talk to frontman extraordinaire Conrad Keely about some of what went into the process of making their newest and longest record.
In the bio that you wrote about XI: Bleed Here Now, you stated that in the beginning of the process for this record, you all sat and showed each other some of your favorite performance videos and exchanged inspirations and biography recommendations. What were some of your favorites of each?
They weren’t all short clips; some were parts of documentaries we’d caught. It’s been a great time for music documentaries, so we’ve been spoilt for choice. But among some of those we shared were Santana playing “Soul Sacrifice” live at Woodstock, scenes from the recent Grateful Dead biography series Long Strange Trip, early footage of Black Sabbath from the behind the album documentary about the album Paranoid, Mike Oldfield performing Tubular Bells and Incantations live (two separate performances), another recent documentary about Motown called Hitsville: The Making of Motown; and a Netflix series called This is Pop, about different aspects of the pop music industry I found particularly enlightening. I wrote a post about watching these and others on my Patreon which you can read here.
Your music has always been relentlessly intriguing, skillful, and grandiose, but this album feels a lot more buoyant, and joyous. The fun of recording in an unorthodox environment and manner, as well as having more of a celebration with it than workhorsing yourselves in a studio really factors into the end result. What was it like capturing that energy more than 25 years into your career as a band?
One luxury of getting old (and there are very few) is being able to look back on the dark times, the low times, and identify what it was that burned you out. What it was that beat you. And if you can learn from these, you can anticipate and take steps to eliminate as many negative outcomes as possible. When it comes to making albums, one of the worst feelings is when it simply isn’t fun. I mean, isn’t that why we got into music when we were kids? Because it was fun?
But when it turns into a career, the fun can sometimes be sucked out of what should be a joyous process. The last album, X, was like that, it was an excruciating, laborious process. So with that fresh in our minds we made sure to do everything possible to make this album a joyous occasion, from start to finish. We were playful, joking, but at the same time deliberate and focused, and I hope that some of that managed to be conveyed in the music.
Can you tell us more about Frizball? Are there standard rules? How many people do you need
for optimal sport performance?
There is no set number, but six or more players gets pretty crazy. And we played without teams, standing in a circle. Basically, it requires the continuous and constant kicking of a soccer ball and throwing of a frisbee at the same time, to whoever looks the most advantageous from your position. Sometimes it’s fun to deliberately gang up on a single player by throwing a frisbee at them while they’re running to kick a soccer ball. We happened to be playing on a soccer field with goals, so if either the frisbee or ball got into the net, we called out “Frisgoal!” But we never counted points. It’s a pointless game. It’s ridiculously fun.
You went with a quadraphonic sound for this album; what was it like for you choosing to work
with that? I know it’s mainly on the mixing side, but what were some recording choices you made to help aid the impact of such a full sound? Would you want to do it again?
I don’t see why we wouldn’t do it again, to be honest. Mixing in quad actually makes mixing easier, and it doesn’t take away from the stereo mix at all, but rather improves it by somehow magically widening the stereo mix. I feel like I’m giving away some secret here, but to be honest I’d much rather that the current bands I know and love catch on and start doing it as well. It excites me to think about what some of our friends bands—Octopus Project, Black Angels, the Sword, Spoon, Explosions in the Sky—what creative experiments they might try out in quadraphonic.
The only thing now is to see how this will translate going forward in the emerging markets of spatial audio and surround sound. We anticipate seeing a future demand for this with VR and gaming, but also in live immersive sound experiences such as the ones that showcased at the last SXSW this year. I’d say this is only the beginning.
For your last album release, you were premiering a five-member band lineup and it has now grown into a six-person band lineup. How is the expansion in sound helping you all grow?
The simple answer will probably be to see the live show, but on paper I’d say that it is giving us freedom to finally tackle songs from throughout our career that we never felt we could do justice to live. I’ve also been really enjoying developing our vocal harmonies, which there are more of on this album than anything we’ve ever done. I’ve always loved singing harmonies, but they require a lot of practice to pull off live, and this is the first time that we’ve ever committed to making that an integral part of the music we’re making.
Prior to XI: Bleed Here Now, your albums all tended to hover between 45-55 minutes, but this one clocks in at a whopping 75. It is longer, however, there are 22 tracks on this album, so the lengths of the individual songs are shorter. How was it writing in a bit of a different form from your norm and achieving this length?
That came naturally—in fact, two songs were cut from the final album right before mixing. We simply had too much other material to focus on. So the decision to cut them had everything to do with making sure the songs that stayed would be stronger for it and receive the attention they deserved. In the end, that’s what we decided on: not length for length’s sake, but brevity based upon giving as much focus to the remaining tracks as possible.
Is “Millennium Actress” a nod to Satoshi Kon? If so, is that your favorite film of his? What do you like about that story most?
The song is one hundred percent inspired by the movie. I wasn’t familiar with Satoshii Kon, though I’m a massive Studio Ghibli/ Miyazaki fan. When I saw Millennium Actress for the first time though, something really resonated with me. There was a timelessness about the story that somehow mirrored many things I saw about the entertainment industry today. About how studio systems and politics and societal demand can exert so much pressure on passionate, talented people. And how this often forces them to either burn out, break down, or retreat into isolation, blocking out the world that had once embraced them. And despite all their dedication to the industry they are often left with nothing to show for it. Thus “all that you’ve acted in, all that you love still belongs to someone else but not you.”
On the heels of your last album’s release, 2020 had a lot of exciting tours and events planned and then unfortunately canceled for you, any plans to restore those plans for the rest of this year and next year?
In a sense yes, though things will be slow to pick up. Not because of any lack of motivation on our part, but simply because the demand for venue bookings is so high right now because everyone has been waiting to play live again, not just us! I’m in no rush, though, because we’re still developing a lot of things on our end that we’d like to try out for the first time, and the more time we have to develop the better our live shows will be.
Something insightful you said is that art needs to point humanity toward solutions. What solutions are you hoping people gather from XI: Bleed Here Now?
Whether it’s a solution or not remains to be discovered. But I hope people will find inspiration in our love of the sound of the classic albums of the past; in a non-ironic, non-derivative, non-kitsch way. We hear what’s going on with modern production, and the only solution we have to the directions we don’t agree with is simply to create something we believe in.
We weren’t trying to make this album sound “70’s prog” or “80’s wave” or “90’s grunge” or any of that. But we do love the sounds of albums from those eras that changed and shaped the audience’s listening paradigm. We allowed those great records them to inform what we do in the hopes of making a work we believed would be futuristic rather that retrospective. We’ve always been more about where music is heading, not where it’s been.
As for bigger solutions, if that’s what you’re referring to, I hope that people understand that music can be the rallying cry for facing the upcoming changes that we’re about to experience in the world at large. When I wrote “Growing Divide,” I wanted to dedicate that to Greta Thunberg—It’s still dedicated to her, and people of her generation demanding change. So music has to begin to reflect the urgency of us coming together as a species and making sure that the species is still around in another 50 years. If a documentary on the subject isn’t enough to wake people up, then maybe we need more more music that does.
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…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’s new album XI: BLEED HERE NOW is out on July 15 via Dine Alone Records, and you can stream it here and preorder it here.
Catch them on tour at the following dates as well:
U.S.
Aug 9 – Houston, TX – Scout Bar
Aug 10 – Mobile, AL – Alabama Music Box
Aug 11 – Atlanta, GA – Purgatory at The Masquerade
Aug 12 – Nashville, TN – The East Room
Aug 13 – Memphis, TN – Hi-Tone
Aug 14 – Oklahoma City, OK – 89th Street Collective
Aug 16 – Denver, CO – Hi-Dive
Aug 17 – Albuquerque, NM – Insideout
Aug 19 – Las Vegas, NV – PSYCHO Las Vegas Festival
EURO
27 Sep – Paris, FR – Petit Bain
28 Sep – London, UK – The Dome
29 Sep – Eindhoven, NL – Effenaar
30 Sep – Rotterdam, NL – Rotown
1 Oct – Cologne, DE – Gebaude 9
2 Oct – Hannover, DE – Cafe Glocksee
3 Oct – Bielefeld, DE – Forum
4 Oct – Hamburg, DE – Kent Club
6 Oct – Aarhus, DK – Radar
7 Oct – Oslo, NO – John Dee
8 Oct – Lund, SE – Mejeriet
10 Oct – Berlin, DE – Festsaal
11 Oct – Warsaw, PL – Hybrydy
12 Oct – Prague, CZ – Underdogs
13 Oct – Regensburg, DE – Alte Malzerei
14 Oct – Munich, DE – Strom
15 Oct – Reutlingen, DE – Franz K
16 Oct – Vienna, AT – Flex
17 Oct – Karlsruhe, DE – Substage
18 Oct – Basel, CH – Sommercasino
19 Oct – Bologna, IT – Locomotiv
21 Oct – Barcelona, ES – Razzmatazz 3
22 Oct – Madrid, ES – Moby Dick
Photo courtesy of Dave Creaney.
