Amazon.co.uk Review
Previous experience has already informed us that Trans Am hearts the 80s. This time around, however, the Maryland trio's fourth album proper,
TA, sees them ditch the Tron route taken on
Futureworld and
Red Line and tear along a Lost Highway-meets-
24 Hour Party People trajectory, and faster than you can say "retrofuturist". Resist that temptation to place Trans Am in the
de rigeur electro-chancers bin though, and be rewarded with freakishly wailing
Joy Division guitars, twisted on their heads and bullwhipped with pulsating Krautrock synths. Submit to the blistering attack of an electrocuted
Fugazi, while alongside an unseen entity cries quietly--sans vocoder these days--and surreptitiously slips its tongue in your ear.
TA is as diverse as it is urgent, and as delicious as it is unsettling. Its slithering technoid frequencies are to be savoured, preferably in the dark. And alone.--
Leslie Gilotti
CD Description
TA's inner booklet, which depicts a white-clad Trans Am looking like a cross between Emerson, Lake & Palmer circa LOVE BEACH and a pale Baha Men, might lead you to think that the album is all a joke. However, the trio's assimilation of their electro-pop influences is so seamless here that the musictranscends retro chic and virtually becomes that towards which it raises a loving eyebrow. The opening tune "Cold War" is the greatest song New Order never wrote (would that Bernie and the boys had contacted Trans Am before releasing the former's limp 2001 album). "Basta" one-ups the minimalism of early-'80s electro by eliminating everything but voices and percussion. The synth riffs on "You Will Be There" are closeenough to vintage Missing Persons to make Dale Bozzio sigh with envy. There's still enough all-important ironic distance to ensure that no one really mistakes the provenance of TA, but the homage it pays to synthesizer heroes of the past is obviously heartfelt.