…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - So Divided

Quiet, peaceful and serene; A Song of Fire and Wine is more a slowly assembling introductory toast. It's a bit like a pre-cursor to that moment when Burt Raccoon wakes up and the shit hits the fan in the Evergreen Forest, a crowd gathers before the curtain rises and the pounding poppy onslaught of Stand in Silence snatches them back into Trail of Dead's web. "I turned inside to find walls of doubt/My mind was stripped of sound," - Conrad Keely leaves the impression that the Texan collective have stumbled upon some troubled times since the grandiose bombast of 2005's 'Worlds Apart' fell on deaf ears. On the other hand, Naked Sun slinks under the door with all the sweat and sleaze of a dusty bar on a desert highway with a Ray Manzarek-styled keyboard solo that almost threatens to spin the track out of control. All that's missing is a poetic ramble about Texas radio and the big beat.

A cover of Guided By Voices Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory reaches its summit within two minutes and conjures up a soaring beauty that should really be impossible to achieve so swiftly. The haunting dramatics of Life flaunts the fact that Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer is onboard for the ride and the album, let alone the track, often oozes her theatrical Brechtian ambience as a result.

Consistent in quality yet entirely varied in style, this is another Trail of Dead record with the potential to keep on giving. As Keely recently told The Skinny, 'So Divided' dabbles extensively in experimental pastiche. This idea is obviously nothing that the listener can't figure out for themselves, but such a clear statement of intent at least removes the potential disappointment we might experience if a band, say, proclaimed the results of their latest jaunt to the studio to be "one of the best albums in the last 20 years," only to later find out that it was, in fact, a fairly transparent catalogue of attempts to turn the rugged coif of Bruce Springsteen's blue collared sincerity into this year's vogue.