ARTIST: The New Trust
TITLE: Dark is the Path Which Lies Before Us
LABEL: Slowdance Records
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 206kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 37m total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-01-23
RIP DATE: 2007-03-08
Track List
----------
1. Spoiled Surprise, A Cheap 4:33
Reveal
2. Life Of The Infidel Comes 2:18
Crashing Down
3. Absence Makes The Heart Go 3:02
Wander
4. Lost Language 1:57
5. Evolve Into Nothing 2:21
6. There's Been A Terrible 2:35
Accident
7. Holy Wars 3:19
8. Chill The Fuck Out 2:03
9. Wake Up, It's The Nineties 2:13
10. This Person Is A Palindrome 3:18
11. When The Dead Start Rising 2:53
12. Body And The Brain 3:52
13. You've Got To Be Fucking 2:57
Shitting Me
Release Notes:
NOTE: the other rip was nuked because there are some track failures with pops
and skips. here's a pop-free version, because this is probably one of the best
albums i've heard thus far in 2007. enjoy.
With all the musical twists, turns and new directions of The Velvet Teen, you'd
think that its bassist Josh Staples wouldn't have a chance to get bored. You
know, with all that reinvention and all. Maybe he he's eating the breakfast of
champions, has a broadband connection to his own inspirational muse or the sort
of prolific streak that Robert Pollard could appreciate; whatever it is, Staples
finds time -- and new musical directions to explore -- to branch off with The
New Trust.
Joining his guitarist wife Sara Sanger and drummer Julia Lancer and guitarist
Michael Richardson, the singer/bassist tackles a career parallel to The Velvet
Teen in The New Trust. And he's in it for the long haul -- from its very title
on down, Dark is the Path Which Lies Before Us is an acknowledgement that being
an independent musician is an uphill battle. Album opener "A Spoiled Surprise, a
Cheap Reveal" sets the stage, laying out a good half-decade's wrestling match
against not-so-romantic poverty, audience indifference and living out of the
back of a van. "The Life of the Infidel Comes Crashing Down" continues the
band's realistic pessimism, deflating the cliched glories of the underground
rock scene. More eerily, perhaps, "This Person is a Palindrome" deals in the
disappointments of dead-end sales positions -- cold calling, rejection and
perseverance -- though it's a good bet songwriters Staples and Sanger know full
well their roles as indie-rock pitchmen as they attempt to get The New Trust's
debut into our ears.
That impending darkness casts its shadows all over Dark is the Path. Although
the foursome's spidery jangle has roots in the same flavors of pop that guide
the likes of The Velvet Teen and The Dismemberment Plan, a desperate gloom
settles all over this effort. "Absence Makes the Heart Go Wander" takes moppish
indie-pop and throws it into a world of sinister, looming atmospheres and
crystalline guitars. "Wake Up, It's the Nineties" lets Staples' sludgy bass
muscle through high-fructose guitar arrangements to sound like The Pixies and
The Shins' benign love child. "There's Been a Terrible Accident" and "The Body
and the Brain" dial in the same trebly guitars and dominating bass as a zillion
dance-punk artistes, while keeping its heart mired in big-guitar indie rock. If
the path before The New Trust is dark, it's only taking them out of an equally
gloomy locale.
The deck's stacked against The New Trust, and nobody seems as aware of it as the
band. So why stick it out? Simple: The New Trust has to. Tracks like "You've Got
to Be Fucking Shitting Me," recounting drunk-driving romance turned bad, and
"Evolve into Nothing," a metaphysical contemplator, deal the big issues. "Wake,
Up, it's the Nineties," an ode to bi-curiosity and "When the Dead Start Rising,"
an extended zombies-as-sycophants conceit, do too, but revel in almost
celebratory good times. Songwriting like this isn't the sort of thing you can
put on the back burner. It needs, nay, demands, the voice The New Trust gives
it.
Regardless, the path ahead of The New Trust is a treacherous one. Let's hope the
outfit makes it through the darkness that lies ahead. Godspeed you, New Trust.