Two great things about Trans Am: first, though they draw heavily from the past, they have a wonderfully selective memory. They move through classic rock, prog and Krautrock and then hop directly to new wave, leapfrogging over the naive simplicity of punk. By virtue of the churches where they worship, Trans Am make the listener confront his or her own musical prejudices. To fully appreciate Trans Am, you must concede that there's nothing inherently terrible about Led Zeppelin or Thin Lizzy; all that's required is for you to hear this band in a way that either ignores or pokes fun at the horrible specter of classic rock radio. Which brings up the second great thing about Trans Am: their killer sense of humor, even more impressive considering 90% of their music is instrumental. The laughs stem from both the great song titles, and from a purely musical source: those quirky, unusual glimpses of misunderstood genres.
As befits a band so devoted to pre-CD rock, Trans Am's albums have always been designed with vinyl in mind (each side of the Surrender to the Night LP artfully spiraled into a noisy locked groove). And though the 73-minute The Red Line is packaged as a single CD, it serves as Trans Am's first real double album.
We're all tired of bloated CDs where one song is needlessly piled atop another simply to flesh out running time. But the brilliantly sequenced The Red Line is something different altogether. This is the double LP done right, with bizarre interludes, lengthy experiments and direct statements that serve as punctuation.
I dare say The Red Line makes better use of its running time than any long album since the Olivia Tremor Control's Black Foliage. And like OTC's masterpiece, there seems to be an overriding concept here. I've heard that the title refers to a Metro line, and that the album is meant to be taken as a "musical journey" (to quote Larry Mullen Jr.) of sorts. If that's true, it's a bit of a circular trip-- one that shuttles you to the outskirts of rock's proving grounds and then drops you back home, dazed, confused and happy.
The trip begins with a shimmering, train-like synth on the brief "Let's Take the Fresh Step Together." This leads to "I Want It All," a crunching tune with Moog and vocoder that ranks among Trans Am's catchiest pop songs yet. And that's no mean feat considering the entire melody consists of two notes. "Casual Friday" is a short transition consisting of nothing but the sound of pounding, tribal drums (a recurring motif on The Red Line). Meanwhile, "Polizei (Zu Spat)" is dense, oscillating Krautrock that beats Add N to X at their own game.
There's a slight dip in quality in the next few tracks, but "For Now and Forever" contains some pretty backwards guitar feedback that almost sounds like bagpipes. "Play in the Summer" is definitely the early album highlight, a punishing blast of rhythmic rock distantly related to Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song." "Play in the Summer" is also notable for a straightforward melody sung without vocal processing, a new wrinkle Trans Am explores throughout this record. But it's "Where Do You Want to Fuck Today" that offers the first peek into Trans Am's newfound interest in ambient electronics: it consists of a keyboard drone, a chorus of whispering voices, and glitchy digital percussion.
"I'm Coming Down" is the next plateau, featuring ominous guitars processed to sound like synthesizers churning beneath a gothic vocal melody (again, delivered sans processing), like something off Depeche Mode's Black Celebration. And on its heels come The Red Line's longest cut, the nine-minute instrumental centerpiece, "The Dark Gift." It begins with a stately acoustic guitar and morphs into a folk-rock groove before building in intensity and busting into full-throttle rock mode; as it reaches the breaking point, "The Dark Gift" slowly cools into a dazzling roller-rink synthesizer coda. It's like the essence of all Trans Am distilled into one epic song.
After that, the group offers fine slabs of Pan Sonic-style digital squirm ("Talk You All Tight") and a bit of shoegazing (the lovely "Slow Response") before returning us home with "Shady Groove," a track which reprises the opening synth drone before building steam and cutting off just prior to climax.
Though Trans Am once seemed a band that ping-ponged between two distinct musical personalities, they come into their own as a band that's mastered a dozen on The Red Line. Even better, this time it's hard to tell where one ends and another begins.
