Label: Interscope
Reissued 2017, Originally released 2002
Source Tags & Codes is the third album (and first for Interscope) from the alt-rock band,... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. It is often cited as the band's finest work, yielding a sound texture that teeters on implosion and seeing the band yank the melody back at the last second. Source Tags & Codes was met with critical acclaim, receiving a score of 85 out of 100 on review aggregate site Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim". The Austin Chronicle's Michael Chamy called Source Tags & Codes "an album that absolutely cannot be ignored". Noel Murray of The A.V. Club wrote that the band "plays imaginative alt-rock with intense passion, and Source Tags & Codes lets the pressure build exquisitely." Noting it's "angular, Sonic Youth-style guitar and earnest anger", Blender's Michael Leonard credited the album for being "more engaging than many of [the band's] post-rock peers", while Uncut similarly wrote that "compared to so many noisemongers, TOD understand that restraint enables unleashed firepower to be exhilarating and awesome."
Track listing:
- Invocation
- It Was There That I Saw You
- Another Morning Stoner
- Baudelaire
- Homage
- How Near How Far
- Life Is Elsewhere
- Heart In The Hand Of The Matter
- Monsoon
- Days Of Being Wild
- Relative Ways
- After The Laughter
- Source Tags & Codes
- Blood Rites