Amid an alphabet soup of government agencies aimed at promoting technology and delivering it to the masses, one would assume there would be a National Recording Studio. Actually, there is, but it's not a program developed by Uncle Sam to transmit radio frequencies all the way from D.C. to Butte, Montana. It's the home of the post-rock outfit Trans Am.

"Today might be kind of an exciting day," says bassist/singer Nathan Means, from Trans Am headquarters. "We have a bunch of equipment that isn't hooked up, so we're going to learn how to make cables today with welding tools. And then we're going to be recording bands here."

Welding isn't the sort of thing one would expect from a group of musicians who make progressive electronic melodies grounded in a bedrock of irony, but then this is Trans Am. This is a band that, despite the legal statutes dictating the use of a lead singer, renounced that rule and have made music sans vox for the last seven years. "We had a lead singer before we were called Trans Am, but we kicked him out," recalls Means. "And so we tried to do vocals ourselves, but that was another catastrophe. And then we realized vocals weren't really adding to our music." That realization came from attending countless shows in the Washington area, where, Means notes, "there's a lot of really bad vocals, because it's partially a punk thing, which works really well for Fugazi -- that atonal screaming -- but for a lot of people, it's just miserable." It became obvious to Means and his bandmates, guitarist Phil Manley and drummer/programmer Sebastian Thomson, that vocals were just mucking things up.

That is, until now. On Futureworld, vocals help to make Trans Am's fourth album a far less bumpy ride than previous endeavors, but the slick production values also make this high-octane journey down the Autobahn smooth sailing. The Frampton-esque guitar solos are still present, as are the Seventies- and Eighties-influenced drumbeats, but the retro-futuristic New Wave noodlings, paired with the occasional distorted, Vocoder-filtered vocals, and the spaced-out instrumentals, make for some spooky pre-millennium tension. The sped-up "Television Eyes," and the marching groove of "Cocaine Computer," are clearly dance tracks, the Zeppelin-inspired "Am Rhein" is r-o-c-k, and the atmospheric "Positron" is the stuff of Eno. Even with the occasional vocals, it's obvious that Trans Am are not swimming in the mainstream.

Not that they're anti-commercial, but the real impetus for throwing in some spoken (or sung or yelled) word was the same element that has always made for other great change: Boredom. "That's probably the best answer for all the changes we've made," says Means, who has recently come to terms with being the lead singer in a band, which means getting all the attention. "We had been talking about it for a while and never really got around to it. There are a lot more pop songs [on Futureworld] and there's vocals, but we didn't make a conscious push in that direction. It was fairly organic."

That's about all that's organic here. Futureworld is as tech-heavy as any DJ set this side of the Atlantic, and often causes the same reaction during live performances. "We played this show in Memphis, and all these people started break dancing," says Means incredulously. "It depends on the mood of the night, but sometimes people dance."

Most of the times, of course, "they just stand and stare at us."

HEIDI SHERMAN
(May 4, 1999)