Royal Trux's prodigal Jennifer Herrema has returned to the Drag City fold, seemingly with a plan to find some kind of redemption through music: She's dedicated her latest project-- the debut album from RTX, a new trio she's formed with guitarist Jaimo Welch and drummer Nadav Eisenman-- to her recently deceased father. For an alum of 90s sludge-rockers Royal Trux to connect to feelings this humanistic on a record is a departure in itself; Herrema and her former bandmate/husband Neil Hagerty always seemed more concerned with what came out of the body-- blood, shit, sweat, cries of pain-- than with its intangible insides. And yet, this album's title suggests transition and transformation, insanity and death... without ever clarifying exactly what's going on.
Despite this, Trux aficionados and fans of Hagerty's solo work will find that Transmaniacon retains lots of the gritty, disgusting promise that attracted them to the duo in the first place. Though it seems to make a point of avoiding the stoned, lingering distortion of Trux LPs, Transmaniacon is a churning guitar album that revels in the super 70s, with brief stretches of disjointed, conceptual blare. However, it can be difficult to find a point to the record's mutton chops and bash-art stylistics. "Joint Chief" simply reworks Royal Trux's "Shockwave Rider" while simultaneously giving Monster Magnet a run for their money. "Limozine", too, is all riff and swagger, and no depth, with Herrema's sneering rasp filtered through piercing static as Welch unleashes a torrent of blistering fretboard solos.
RTX fill this self-produced outing with filters and warbles that, while sometimes intriguing, are more often trying. On "Heavy Gator", Herrema's vocal is unnecessarily layered multiple times over faraway guitar and simplistic percussion, while the song's real meat-- her "whoah-whoa's" and muscular guitar chug-- is left to fight against the squelch. "PB+J" takes the effects even further, detaching into a jigsaw of digitized pitch-shifts. Somewhere amongst all these disjointed piece is a hard-rock power-ballad (of some kind), but since the song ends so quickly, we're left to wonder whether it's intended as anything more than a lazy study in rock 'n' roll regeneration.
So maybe Transmaniacon is just a big eardrum buster. Its guitars are often Mountain-sized, after all, and a tour featuring people in bearskin cloaks wouldn't be out of the realm of the expected. But then, in come tracks to suggest that Herrema's album dedication does indeed point to a cathartic musical agenda: A pained wail that could be woman-made is generated from the chaos of "Psychic Self Defense", while closer "Resurrect" showcases a less-distorted Sonic Youth-meets-Aerosmith pace (and elegiac soloing) seems specifically directed towards a watcher from above. As a series of samples takes over its melody, Herrema repeats the song's plaintive vocal phrase, indicating healing or closure wrapped in throaty delivery.
Transmaniacon could certainly be the start of something good. There's true songcraft in songs like the crashing, ragged "Pulling Out Now" or the fuzzed-out Sabbath/Fu Manchu stomp of "Low Ass Mountain Song", and the album's art direction-- a high-concept version of trad-metal imagery-- is truly awesome. But for now, RTX seem to be having some difficulty deciding whether to focus on boozy rock 'n' roll or noisy art projects, and this album's middle ground isn't making much headway toward a lasting impression.
