Hardcore indie rockers invade Yale

COURTESY THRILL JOCKEY RECORDS Trans Am's sound collage melds colossal guitars and Casio keyboards with a vengeance.

On Sat., Oct. 24, the Musicians Cooperative brings Trans Am, Washington D.C.'s favorite sons of Atari and Aerosmith, to Morse dining hall for a much-anticipated show, including past and present Yale opening acts Sunday Puncher (see record review) and the Eddie Gunther Sound. As a prelude to the upcoming show, one Herald writer recalls his first Trans Am experience:

Earlier this year, for lack of anything better to do, I let my friend Adam drag me along to a Spatula/Trans Am/Polvo show. We had a good idea of what we were in for--indie rock boys and girls in tight sweaters and rectangular, black plastic-framed glasses, generic "post-rock" (some indie boys noodling around on a bunch of instruments, "exploring sound" without going anywhere). But, we were bored and the show was cheap, so in we went.

As we suffered through Spatula's tedium, and broke down laughing as the couple in front of us leaned in to smooch and instead bashed glasses, we tried to figure out what Trans Am would sound like. The day before I had read a description of Polvo as "the band most likely to write a rock opera," and that's the kind of set I was dreading from Trans Am. I mean, there's a reason prog rock died. Adam said he'd heard Trans Am sounded like Tortoise, post-rock's royalty, "but with shorter songs." I prepared myself for the worst.

While I was questioning why I had even come to the show, a neanderthalesque roadie in tight jeans and a Harley Davidson shirt got on stage and started tuning a guitar. He was soon joined by a bassist in a wife-beatershirt and a shirtless drummer. The redneck roadie put down the guitar, walked to the front of the stage, and then started playing a dinky rhythm on a keyboard, a beat that immediately metamorphosized into Stereolab gone metal once the other two kicked in--bleeps and bloops and a harsh crunch.

The rest of Trans Am's performance further deflated my post-rock expectations. No shoegazing here. Just fuckin' rawk 'n' roll, albeit without vocals and almost as self-indulgent as Polvo. Philip Marley struck the classic guitar hero pose of guitar-as-phallus, legs spread wide. Nathan Means may well have done some guitar smashing, Sebastian Thompson might have spun a drumstick or two. There was a Led Zeppelin cover, a 30-minute number, and a two-minute one. The band veered between quiet, melodic stasis, and "balls-to-the-wall" (their description) rock/electronics--everything but headbang-ing. They finished their set, and boredom, fought off for an hour, returned with a vengeance as Polvo hit the stage and began actively to do nothing.

Trans Am's last two albums, Surrender to the Night and The Surveillance (Thrill Jockey), are much the same as what they played at that show. Surrender is far less paranoid and abrasive than Surveillance, but Trans Am's M.O. remains the same: tongue-in-cheek '80s prog/metal clichés plus intentionally cheesy beatbox rhythms plus post-rock's expansiveness. A song can turn from Radiohead to Pan Sonic (a minimalist, repetitious, abrasive electronic group) to Rush in a few seconds, or it can be all three at once.

If Saturday's show is any indication, the Musician's Cooperative will keep its end of the bargain. Trans Am aren't big-city hipsters; they're not into referencing jazz, Muzak, or minimalism; their liner notes aren't laundry lists of their vintage instruments. Instead, they use a secret assortment of old Casios and the like, and they rock like they were back home. So keep your end of the bargain this Saturday--but don't forget your indie rock glasses (and your lighter).

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