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Rank Your Records: Conrad Keely Rates …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’s Nine Records

The frontman ordered the prolific band's output while motorbiking through the streets of Phnom Penh.

In Rank Your Records, we talk to members of bands who have amassed substantial discographies over the years and ask them to rate their releases in order of personal preference.

Of all the places to take a phone call, Conrad Keely chose the crowded streets of Phnom Penh, where he’s lived for the past four years. “There is something about the chaos of the nightlife that makes me creative,” he admits. To add to the chaos, Keely also reveals that he’s strapped to his motorbike, which explains the wind blowing through our connection. When I ask if he needs to pull over to, you know, avoid crashing and killing himself, he gives a little laugh and replies, “I’ll be OK.”

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Since forming …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead with Jason Reece as teenagers back in 1994, Keely has often used chaos as a stimulus for his work. From the thundering crash that christened the band’s debut album, to the violence that commonly erupted from their earlier performances, it’s always been there lurking somewhere in Trail Of Dead’s 22 years of existence.

Though it comes from a very different place, Keely has instilled a new type of chaos into his first solo album. Original Machines allowed the 43-year-old to explore new avenues as a songwriter that wouldn’t necessarily work on a Trail Of Dead record. For example, the breezy and contemplative new age-leaning instrumental “Waimanolo Drive” or “Marcel Was Here,” which sounds like a wild reinterpretation of a celebratory piece of music from Super Mario Bros., would have no business rubbing elbows with his band’s ornately constructed prog rock odysseys. For Keely, Original Machines was all about working without restrictions.

“It was very liberating and funny because I resisted it for so long,” he says. “I never thought of myself as a solo artist. I always considered myself as a member of a band or a writer for a team. So to do something alone I found there was this freedom because I had all of these styles I could do freely without having to be concerned about the context of Trail of Dead, and having to keep in form of nine previous records. I didn’t need to think about that. I could just immerse myself in the freedom of exploring any style I wanted. And the record is more of an exploration.”

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In ranking the nine Trail Of Dead records, Keely doesn’t find that same liberty. In the end he ranks them based on the experience of making them because “it’s really hard to put numbers to these things,” he says. “They’re kind of like children. I’d hate to have to number children. I like them all in many different respects.”

9. The Century of Self (2009)

Conrad Keely: I don’t think I have a least favorite, but the one I was least pleased with in how it turned out would be The Century Of Self. That had more to do with the circumstances in how it was recorded, which made it impossible to create the record we wanted to make. That was a shame. The memory you take away from an album is whether you enjoyed the process or not. I think the public reception is the least thing I base it on. Because one of my favorite records is our least popular record.

You didn’t enjoy making the album, so does any of that negativity affect the quality of the songwriting?
No, I like the songs. My biggest regret is that we didn’t do the songs justice because of the conflict that was going on during the recording. If I had the choice I would re-record the songs and re-arrange them in a big way.

The band’s website has a write up about this album that says, “In the end, it was quite a miracle the album was completed at all.” What happened?
We had a massive falling out with the producer and there was all sorts of drama. But the good thing about all of that is it led to a good relationship with the producer we used for the next four records.

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The drama you’re referring to is that the tapes were held hostage by Mike McCarthy?
[Laughs] Those were crazy times, but to put it into context, you have to keep in mind that the album was made at the time we left Interscope and went independent. And Mike was used to working with us on major label albums with a major label budget. What he expected us to do with the budget we were given was impossible. It was very complicated. But in a way I blame a lot of that on the shifting of the music industry.

This was also the last album to feature Kevin. Why did he leave?
Oh, I forgot about that too. That was a shit time. Kevin had some serious substance-related problems and we lost touch after that. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him since.

8. Source Tags & Codes (2002)

My other least favorite is the one that everybody likes: Source Tags & Codes.

And that’s because everyone likes it so much?
Yeah, that’s pretty much the reason. I don’t think it was our best record. I don’t think it deserved 10 out of 10, so we’d have to live with that from then on. It wasn’t an easy record to make either. I have a lot of sentimental attachment to the songs on the album, but if we’re just talking about an album in general…

You say this was also a hard record to make. Did that have to do with pressure coming from Interscope, because this was your major label debut?
Not because of that. I think it was a lot of pressure the band was taking on internally. We were trying to decide about who the primary songwriters were, and we did it in complete isolation on a farm in the middle of nowhere. There was nobody else around. I don’t think I’d ever do that again.

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Why do you think this album did so well then? Was it timing?
That is definitely the most obvious answer. But it wasn’t just timing of the music scene, but also the timing of the place we were in our lives. Because it was a time when we were very cohesive as a band, at least with the original line up. And we had a youthful energy about us that made it appealing.

You toured this album a couple years ago. What was that like for you?
I didn’t enjoy that experience. I mean, it was OK. But that’s not the way I’d like to present my music. I understand it though. It’s a trend and people enjoy seeing bands play full records. But it wasn’t a bad experience, though. I think we did an OK job playing it. I’d give ourselves a B+ for that.

7. IX (2014)

The next most difficult record to make would be the last one. And that was because the lyrics were about my break-up at the time. It was really difficult for me and very personal. It was a sad time for me because it was about my ex and my son. They were painful to write. They weren’t difficult to write and came rather easily to me because I was going through it. But I was happy with the record, so it’s nothing against the record itself.

Originally these songs were planned as instrumentals?
Yes, most of them were. And I guess when it comes to music I just think in vocal melodies, and it was a suggestion of our producer. As soon as he suggested it the lyrics and melodies jumped to my head. It wasn’t that difficult. It was a natural thing. The instrumentals were something we just wanted to do as an experiment. Like, “Can we make an album of instrumentals?” And the answer was, “No, we cannot!”

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What role did the War On Drugs play in influencing this record?
I was listening to the War On Drugs at the time. There were a couple of songs where I was thinking about Slave Ambient. I’m always falling in love with albums and they always change the way I think about music and inspire what I’m doing at the time. I’m far from having lost faith in music. In fact, with the current state of the industry independent music has become a lot more interesting and experimental.

6. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead (1998)

The next most difficult record to make would be probably the first, because it was our first and I would have liked to re-record a lot of it but we never got a chance to. We still play a lot of those songs live, and I’ve never really moved away from that material. I still love those songs.

When you reissued this album a few years ago, were you able to remaster or remix it to sound better?
We remastered it, and I think it was also remixed as well, but there wasn’t the freedom to change enough to make it something completely new. But it’s definitely an improvement. It’s kind of persnickety, like an audiophile would think it sounds better. But it didn’t change the music at all.

Back then you called yourselves “anti-musicians.” Do you still think of yourselves in that way?
Well, it was probably a little facetious on my part because I grew up playing classical piano. So I was anything but anti-musicianship. But it had more to do with our attitude towards people who took it too seriously. I’m still that way but I enjoy virtuosity as well, as long as it’s portrayed properly. [Laughs]

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5. Worlds Apart (2005)

The next most difficult record to make would be Worlds Apart. That was pretty tough. It was fun, but the hard thing was the disappointing reception. I put so much into that record and thought, “Well, if people don’t like it then I should just give up music.” Luckily I didn’t, but I did feel like it was unfairly received by people that expected something from us. That’s the problem with expectations. It’s not that it was a bad record, it just didn’t meet the expectations.

In a recent interview you said this is both your best and your worst album.
Yeah, but when I say that, I’m also considering the production and everything involved in the making of the record. Not just whether the end product is any good. It definitely suffered from too much of a budget. That was the album that Interscope gave us a really large advance for. We just took it and blew it on having a real string section and all this stuff. And I think because of that I later learned that I work better with limitations. If I don’t have everything I’ve asked for then I make do with what I’ve got and it ends up being much simpler and better.

Pitchfork gave the previous album a 10.0, but this one a 4.0) and said that you were “maybe the world’s most terrible singer.”
Yeah, I’d love to hear him sing. To this day I’m still furious about it, but in a way that review has inspired me in so many different ways to prove them wrong.

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4. Lost Songs (2012)

So after the experience of recording Tao of the Dead, my philosophy was every time we record, we will make it our mini-vacation. We get so much love from Germany, so we decided to go to Germany and record at this small studio in Hanover for a month. And that was really fun. Just being out of America. Our producer had never been to Germany before.

You wrote some of the lyrics about the Syrian civil war. What made you want to address that?
Well, I knew that it was going to be fucked up, and if people had only listened to me maybe we could have avoided the whole crisis. But no, nobody listened to me. I just saw that it was going to be bad. I’m not surprised at how things turned out at all.

3. Madonna (1999)

Madonna was really great. Talk about spending too long on a record. We actually recorded that over the course of nine months. But that wasn’t with steady studio time. We had to steal studio time from this place. So any time it was free, Mike McCarthy would sneak us in and we’d record. It had this real “breakin’ the law” feel to it where we’d go and record it in the middle of the night.

This is the album where I discovered Trail Of Dead.
I think this is the album where we discovered Trail Of Dead too.

You still play a lot of these songs live.
Yeah. I think “Mistakes and Regrets” is still our most popular song in the UK. More popular than anything from Source Tags. I think my favorite thing about that song is that I was hanging out with Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine at this weird rave in Japan at this festival, and he complimented me on the introduction in that song. I thought that was really cool. He actually learned it on guitar. I’m sure it wasn’t much of a challenge for him. But he said he liked the ascending minor chords.

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What was it like working with Merge back then?
It was fine. At the time they were smaller than they were now. They became much more of an institution later on. But back then they wouldn’t pay for anything. It was impossible getting any budget. We didn’t have a budget. We gave them the finished record before we knew they were interested. It wasn’t like they gave us an advance or anything.

2. So Divided (2006)

I enjoyed making this a lot because after the expectations for World’s Apart, the intent of So Divided was “Fuck you to everyone! Fuck the industry! Fuck the label! Fuck the fans! Fuck all of you guys! We don’t care anymore.” And we just made this really eclectic record for fun. I enjoy that record because I’m able to listen to it and hear something that doesn’t sound like my band. Each song is like a different band from somewhere else.

So Divided is described on your website as “the most commercial, worst selling and least popular” Trail of Dead record.
[Laughs] Yeah, which I’m totally fine with. I’m an underdog lover by nature, so I think it’s funny a lot of people didn’t like it. I don’t care. I enjoyed it and I like it.

This was your last album for Interscope. Did it feel like that while you were making it?
Yeah, for me it did. I wanted to do something that didn’t fit in with anything that was going on at the time. It wasn’t meant to be popular. It was meant to be weird.

Did you get the same kind of budget as World’s Apart?
No, but it wasn’t bad. You could tell that the record label was like, “OK, that record didn’t work so here’s half that budget.” It was still bigger than you’re ever gonna get these days on an independent label. At the time, we just went with it.

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You wrote a song about the misery of touring with Audioslave.
Yeah, “Eight Day Hell,” which is about touring with them in the UK, which ended up being a terrible experience. They were great guys, but their fans… it brought out the contrast between what a big, popular rock act is about and what our band was about. We were just vastly different.

1. Tao of the Dead (2011)

So why is this number one?
This is mostly because it was such a great experience. We had fun making it, and I remember my attitude at the time was that we should just enjoy the experience and not even get caught up in any detail, nothing, and just throw down any idea and go with the flow. And that’s how the record came out. I was also really into the lyrics that I came up. All of the lyrics for the second part were pretty much out of the Dao De Jing, slightly reworded. But more or less reiterations of Sun Tzu sayings. [Laughs]

This album was recorded in ten days and stripped down compared to the other records.
It was stripped down, but it was also really complicated in a technical sense, the ways we were experimenting. And it was done super, super fast. It’s better than having too much time.

You wrote this as an album that can be experienced as either 16 different movements or two parts. What inspired that?
I think it’s just the way that it came out. When we put the songs together they just came out that way. But I arranged the individual pieces at home once we’d made demos of them, and then put them into that sequence. It worked. It felt right. Whenever I sequence an album I’m thinking of a journey—a departure and a return.

Did you ever finish the graphic novel?
I’m working on a novel, actually. It’s a companion to a lot of our music, and it’ll be illustrated. I’m trying to finish the first draft this year, but it’s a very long novel and it takes time. I’m past 100,000 words, so it’ll probably be big.

…And You Will Know Cam Lindsay from Twitter - @yasdnilmac