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#650: …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – It Was There That I Saw You

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‘It Was There That I Saw You’, the (almost) opener of Trail of Dead’s 2002 album Source Tags & Codes still gets me pumped today. I listened to the full album for the first time about five years ago and ended up pleasantly surprised by the entire thing. There’s this grand mystical vibe that the music and lyrics give out throughout which some may find pretentious but I found bearable at least.

But ‘I Was There’ starts it all off with this calming introduction that suddenly explodes into a ball of energy with crashing drums and exhilarating guitar work. It is during this moment that singer Conrad Keely comes into frame singing about the time he became enamoured by someone (I’ll assume a lady) and had some great times with her before eventually losing touch. He is left wondering what he has been up to in the time that have been apart.

It’s endearing stuff. But then the fast music suddenly stops and transitions into this slow breakdown – with a melody taken from the preceding track ‘Invocation’ – that builds and builds in intensity, repeating that melody endlessly before transitioning back into the fast music you were hearing almost two minutes ago. Ahhh… it feels so good when that happens. You can experience it too!

It’s a dynamic track that pulls and pushes and takes a few turns here and there. It’s an exciting listen. It’s a great album, I say.

#580: Ween – I Saw Gener Cryin’ in His Sleep

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Not a very festive or momentous song for the coming new year, I know. But these things aren’t planned. I just do whatever song is next on my phone. And on this New Year’s Eve the track is ‘I Saw Gener Cryin’ in His Sleep’, the thirteenth track on Ween’s major-label debut Pure Guava.

For any Ween fan reading (quite unlikely) wondering where I would place Pure Guava in my favourite albums of the band, I’ll say to you that it probably isn’t in my top five of theirs. To me it just feels like The Pod Part 2, though with less songs and… a bigger sound to it maybe? There’s a larger emphasis on grooves and the drums on Guava, but The Pod in itself is just a lot more interesting and has a lot more variety – no matter how out there it is. I only have four songs from Guava on my phone and for some reason ‘I Saw Gener’, which I feel a lot of people would probably skip over after a while, popped out to me on that first album listen in 2015 or so.

I guess it’s because Ween are known for being this silly band who make a lot of silly stuff (even though their music is actually amazing and you should listen to anything of theirs as soon as you can) and this song details an instance where things aren’t as they seem. Dean Ween – real name Mickey Melchiondo, affectionately known as Deaner by Ween fans – sings about seeing bandmate Gene Ween crying in his sleep and offers some advice to help him through bad times. It’s all a bit heavy.

However, it’s shoddily recorded and set to upbeat, bouncy music which completely overshadows the downbeat lyricism. The drum machines skip out of time and some points, the drum machine cymbals thrash about wildly, there’s some piercing feedback after the first chorus. It’s a great listen. It makes it so funny, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s so conflicting. But that’s the beauty of many a Ween song.

That’s the end of 2017. Hard to believe I revived this back in August when I was stuck at home relentlessly searching for jobs online. Now I have one. I start next week. Hopefully this is the start of something special. Will see you in 2018. Many more songs to come.