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Rating: "Revelation" is the word that best fits the memory of my first listens to the album discovered some time after its release in 2002 (a bad year for wines, but in musical terms quite the opposite if I think of masterpieces like "You Forgot It in the People" by Broken Social Scene, "Sea Change" by Beck, "Turn on the Bright Lights" by Interpol, "Songs for the Deaf" by QOTSA... ok, enough with the digressions).
Of surprising compactness and homogeneity, S.T.&.C. is a nursery of fascinating and sharp plants with black stems and yellow, orange, up to the lava color of its cover. This is to somehow tell those who haven't experienced it yet that the album permeates you with itself, its warmth, injecting you with sensations oscillating between anguish and comfort, the kind that only damn well-conceived tracks can impress, so determined to introduce you for a few minutes into the world of those who conceived them.
And all this starts with a piano, an innocuous, sweet, melancholic stunning piano loop over a dirty carpet. Incredible how such a beginning (a constant for the Texan band, the prelude to a subsequent magnificent upheaval) proves absolutely coherent with the rest of the work even without an acid guitar or multiple screams. A minute and a half that is worth ten.
"It Was There That I Saw You" back then hit me with a sinister, damn good strike. A stunning piece built at the edges of a retro-style soundtrack, packed with sweetness and melancholy, then covered by the merciless lava flow upon its return.
S.T.&.C continues to grip you by the throat without releasing its hold. Full, evocative, perhaps a wonderful accident, perhaps the birth of one or two minds that reached their creative peak after excellent debuts. Tracks like Another Morning Stoner are hard to describe because the only reference points for the reviewer are the sensations, and here there are too many, uncontrollable, inexhaustible, and as mischievous as the four or five black heads (Beatles lovers) behind guitars, bass, and drums (lately, drums, having seen them live with two drummers).
Not a sound out of place, no choice to discuss, there's nothing I dare criticize about the work in question. Or rather, there would be one: because of them, expectations for their albums have risen to incredible heights, keeping me eagerly awaiting a new chapter that would be on par, as in the case of World Apart, tragically disappointing for the more recent So Divided...
Putting aside the little bitterness that life reserves, the trilogy Baudelaire - Homage - How Near How Far (the latter being my favorite on the album) continues to dispense direct emotions as painted by the hand of a veteran, even if these are not complex tracks nor songs arranged in some extraordinary way. It's the effectiveness of each individual/simple track that amazes, because there's never a significant drop in inspiration and (yet) the miracle threshold is never crossed, which would otherwise elevate this work to the status of the most significant in the rock scene of the past twenty years. ...but if we are already talking about a decade, the discussion may hold up (...I take responsibility for what I say).
Among the rocky-soft ups and downs, the album flows up to the notes of Relative Ways, another gem that never tires me. Jason Reece's drumming, sometimes voice and guitar, mostly an angry drummer with the hobby of dismantling the kit when he's had enough and throwing it towards the audience (at a live gig, he barely grazed me with one of the toms...) builds compelling grooves that chase each other, always keeping the energy of the pieces high, while the guitars of Conrad Keely and Kevin Allen (the only gentle one among these crazies) move from dirty to almost clean to orchestrate the various phases of an album that will hardly be forgotten.
I don't even particularly like these Texans but Source Tags and Codes is one of the few albums that made me think "I wish I were making this music" during those classic moments when you're lying on the bed daydreaming, staring at nothingness (...thoughts usually followed by "I'd like to get laid").
Magnificent.
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