Album Review: ...And You Will Know Us From The Trail Of Dead - IX

Given their graceful decline into middling mid-career respectability, 2012’s Lost Songs was an unexpected wonder of pure vitriol. The follow-up, IX, named after a fictional icy planet from Frank Herbert’s Dune, is a return to more measured writing with reflective themes such as separation and loss, perhaps most eloquently captured on the elegiac tone poem, The Ghost Within. The band’s early ambition still lives on, as evidenced by the unexpected orchestral flourishes that enshrine How To Avoid Huge Ships.