Like almost everything they’ve recorded since their 2002 benchmark Source Tags & Codes, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead’s new Tao of the Dead sounds like an attempt to top everything the band has ever done. It’s epic, over-the-top, occasionally ridiculous and frequently exhilaratingin other words, it’s a lot like their slightly underrated 2009 album The Century of Self. That record didn’t win the band many new fans, and I suspect this one won’t, either, but even as a casual Trail of Dead listener, it’s hard not to admire the band’s commitment to going balls-out every time.
The Australian electro-pop quartet Cut Copy sticks to pretty sounds but backs away from tight pop song structures on Zonoscope, their follow-up to 2008’s In Ghost Colours, and the winning result is often reminiscent of Yeasayer’s recent Odd Blood.
The xx producer Rodaidh McDonald worked on Violet Cries, the debut record from the highly buzzed (and ridiculously named) Brighton goth-trio Esben and The Witch, and he brings to the band the same enchantingly spacious mix as The xx's debut, letting each instrument ring out as if it were played in isolation. Where The xx hint at sex but never seal the deal, Esben and The Witch traffic in violence and really deliver: Violet Cries lures listeners in with comely sounds only to lash out at them with tortured dissonance. The record achieves actual scareswhich is more than many of today’s goth acts can claimbut unfortunately the arrive in a pretty hollow package. Violet Cries’ underwritten songs bleed together into a bland blur, like dialogue in a B-horror film designed only to fill the time between frights.
Also out this week:
* Nicole Atkins’ Mondo Amore
* Motorhead’s The World is Yours
* Akron/Family’s mouthful S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT
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* Jessica Lea Mayfield’s Tell Me (produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach)
* Teddy Thompson’s Bella
* And a Yanni album, Truth of Touch.
