Blood Brothers, Trail of Dead @ Irving Plaza, 11/12

Sunday shows are the absolute worst and this was the second show in two nights for the Blood Brothers/Trail of Dead tour at Irving Plaza. Add to it the shitty weather outside and in such a rare instance, I'd be willing to give these guys a mulligan. Over the course of the last two years, Trail of Dead has ascended my list of favorite bands even as others began to write them off. I missed their show at Black Cat last year and this was my first chance to see them live. From the cryptic messages found throughout the blogosphere, the reviews of this tour have been very pro Blood Brothers/meh AYWKUBTTOD. Needless to say, given the above, my expectations going into last night were pretty damn low. Well, you know where I'm going with this, forget all that shit because they ripped out my insides and shred them to pieces. I'm completely exhausted this morning, my ears are still ringing, and I could care less. They were everything I wanted them to be and more.

I won't go into much detail because I want InMyTree to go into Tuesday's show with an open mind. If you know what you're getting into, Blood Brothers will absolutely live up to the hype they're getting on this current tour but their sound is just not for me. Given the choice of incessant screaming or Conrad Keely's admittedly shaky vocals, I'll take the latter every time. Consistent with the rest of the tour, the set list was very focused on earlier work, "Stand in Silence" was again, the only new song they played. I'm not sure if this is due to lack of practice with the new material or the fact that the album has yet to be released. That will be judged by the remainder of the tour. They played the 3 songs that I needed to hear including what I believe to be the best song of the past decade, "How Near, How Far" ("Another Morning Stoner" and "Will You Smile Again" were the other two). Their set was a relatively short 70 minutes but to be honest, I'm not sure I could have handled anything more. Jason Reece did about 3 songs but made up for it by doing an entire show's worth of stage antics. The band did a one song encore and invited about 30 people from the crowd up on stage and unfortunately, I'm not exactly sure what the last song was, maybe "Richter Scale Madness?" It was a bit hard to tell with everything going on and people bouncing into the band. Here is my attempt at the setlist, in no particular order, and I may have one or two incorrect songs in here. If anyone out there has the official setlist, please send it to me.

"Ode to Isis"
"How Near How Far"
"Caterwaul"
"Homage"
"Clair de Lune"
"Days of Being Wild"
"It Was There That I Saw You"
"Relative Ways"
"Another Morning Stoner"
"Will You Smile Again"
"Stand in Silence"
"Rest Will Follow"
"Richter Scale Madness" ??

Trail of Dead is going to be busy over the next two days, they're doing an album release show tonight at midnight at the Virgin Megastore in NYC, followed by another in-store at Sound Garden tomorrow in Baltimore and then the show at 9:30 Club tomorrow night. Who knows, that could lead to a sub par effort but you've been warned.

Related News:
The New York Times reviewed the Saturday show