... And You Will Poll Us By The Trail Of Dead - album poll

That was the same show I was at :) It was loud, and terrible. The loudness obliterated what I find ToD's strength, which is melody. They did not find that balance, at all. There's no need for them to be this loud. It felt like they tried to obscure bad vocals/bad play by just blasting their songs out there. Plus: bailing three songs into ST&C - my fave ToD album - was nagl, to say the least.

Idk, ymmv, but I was bitterly disappointed by one of the bands I admire most.

They played well in TO last night - their drummer in particular is great - but the mixing and tone was absurd. Specifically, their lead guitarist was so amped up (both in terms of amplitude and maxing out distortion) that it drowned out everything but those drums! Conrad was literally inaudible. Completely baffling choices. The set was Madonna plus a couple Source Tags tunes, though it took me a full 45-60 seconds each to figure out what those were due to the sound.

This was nice to see, incl some great trivia I hadn't previously heard.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/and-you-will-know-us-by-the-trail-of-madonna/

never got why people think that's the classic, including the band itself seemingly, they got much better later on

go back and correct your atrocity of a worlds apart review cowards

I think the review is correct to say it's not seen as *the* classic (see poll results!) but was important nevertheless, and was a big part of that loose scene of "aggro" indie acts mentioned

lol at "Totally Natural" being inspired by Dogstar, who even Keanu recently admitted sucked

i guess in context it was important

that completely contrived Farmclub performance that's mentioned is absolutely what got them on my radar in the first place. I wasn't aware Iovine had taken such a personal interest in them, though

The pitchfork sunday reviews lead with this quote:

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible.

I guess that means they had deleted the original review from their archive?
https://web.archive.org/web/20060508094809/http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/a/and-you-will-know-us-by-the-trail-of-dead/madonna.shtml

(it's not nearly as embarrassing as some of Ryan Schreiber's reviews, and the number rating they gave it back then is just about the same)

That’s really funny. I was wondering why they wouldn’t have reviewed it the first time around. That original review is godawful, of course.

https://youtu.be/bbXNaERHIfA

new one X: The Godless Void and Other Stories (lol) out in January. single's good, Keely is....sort of really singing on it?!

Singing's not too bad! Not blown away by the song, but I'm not left hopeless, which is something

this sounds pretty good! the instrumental bridge is where it's at

Aaaww, I love this! The singing is so nice, though I think I prefer when the guitar is a bit lower in the mix and all murky. Hope there's something as good as A Million Random Digits on the new one.

A lovely little 90s alt-rock song! Nice of Conrad to show us a bit of his life in Cambodia while he's about it

But yeah, hoping for something more dynamic next. XI was a really strong album imo

Sounds great

new one is moody AOR comfort food and I mean this as a compliment. the vocals are, as aforementioned, mysteriously improved.