Interview: ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead will play the Cat's Cradle Sept. 15 with Secret Machines. Check out the interview with Conrad Keely.

The press release for the new album, The Century of Self, calls it “a return to form” and then references Source Tags and Codes, your most critically acclaimed album. Is that accurate, or just an annoying comparison?

I hate that thing. It’s stupid. I usually write some creative essay as a press release. I don’t know really, I guess that Source Tags and Codes was just good timing. Our music has always sounded like  us.

Obviously, critical reactions are hot and cold since then.

Yeah, well I’m at a place in my life where I’m making music for myself, not really with what people want in mind. I mean—I’m definitely grateful for their support though. But when I was younger being well-received was a big priority, As you get older you get more in tune with your inner voice, and make what it wants to create. It gets more important I think—if you don’t follow your own intuition, your desire, it’s very damaging psychologically.

I know you’re now living in New York, but Trail of Dead graduated from the heralded and still terrific Austin music scene. Does a scene denote any source of artistic collaboration or community, or is that a myth?

I wish that there was. Maybe it was like that in the past. I think that music now is not nearly as communal as it has been, or maybe could’ve been. Sometimes I feel like the music I make isn’t as influenced by musical peerage as I would like it to be. I think we live in a very isolationist time. Mass media in general—the fact that we’re being bombarded by so much information at our fingertips—makes us not rely on old forms of communication. If people want gossip they go to some blog. Creatively, I think I need to be stimulated by new environments.

Well do you at least hang out with people in other bands from the area?

We’ll sometimes collaborate [with other Austin bands], but we don’t really hang out together. Unless we’re on tour, in which case we’ll be with them all the time. Nothing’s the same as being on tour with somebody, it’s really quite special. And that’s one of the reasons to keep going with music—to go to some exotic locale.

You recently left major label Interscope to self-release on your new Richter Scale Records brand. Was the goal there just a method that would give you full power and creative control, or is there a hope to sign other bands in the future?

I want to put out Austin bands on it. There is no label in Austin that really represents that place. If I could do that for a young band starting out—it doesn’t have to be that expensive—I would love to distribute an album for a new band.

I know you’ve always drawn your own album covers, and that you’re a visual artist as well. I’ve heard a visual art element of the current tour mentioned, does that tie in with the themes from The Century of Self?

This artwork reminds me of the art I enjoyed when I was young. It was inspired by a Moody Blues album, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. It’s meant as an allegory for knowledge, or you know, the potential for knowledge. Those themes are an illustration of things I was really drawn to as a child. And there’s always a theme behind the record. This one’s about my family, metaphysics—even prophesy pops up. “Insatiable Two” [from The Century of Self] is about Orang Pendek, sort of the Bigfoot of Indonesia, or some other close relative of the human race observing us from a safe distance and seeing what we’ve done to the planet....the destruction of it.

What’s exciting about coming to Cat’s Cradle, and what kind of show can interested students expect to see?

Well, when I go to Chapel Hill, I plan to go to this electric violin shop. I’ve been studying viola and cello for the past six years. We’re trying to hopefully have an art exhibit at venues that have a space where we can mount the album artwork and my other pieces. If there’s a gallery nearby where we can display original album artwork—we could have a one night art exhibit.

As for the music?

If we’re in a bad mood we’ll play a chaotic or noisy show. If we’re in a great mood...well, it’ll still be crazy. Really, I don’t even know what to expect when we play, so I tell people not to have expectations.